<^^^?S!?^ 


;*     DEC  15 1908      *, 


%- 


■m^ 


BV    3790    .M2    1906 

Mabie,  Henry  Clay,  1847- 

1913. 
Method  in  soul-winning  on 


i-^ 


METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINNING 


Method  in  Soul- Winning 

On  Home  and  Foreign  Fields 


v/ 


By  HENRY  C.  MABIE,  D.D., 

Corresponding  Secretary  American  Baptist  Missionary  Union 
Boston,    Mass. 


He  that  is  wise  winneth  souls — Pro^v.  11:30, 


New  York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1906,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 

FOURTH  EDITION 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  80  Wabash  Avenue 
Toronto:  27  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:     100    Princes    Street 


^0  au  Minners  of  Sauls 


PREFACE 

The  Writer  of  the  following  pages,  while  yet  in 
student  days,  was  singularly  led,  largely  through  the 
influence  of  Dwight  L.  Moody  and  some  of  his  asso- 
ciate workers  in  Chicago,  into  active  efforts  for  souls, 
and  was  blessed  in  seeing  many  brought  to  the  ac- 
ceptance of  Christ. 

Later  when  he  entered  the  ministry  and  assumed 
different  pastorates,  east  and  west,  much  more  marked 
blessing  attended  his  labours  of  an  evangelistic  sort. 
An  important  spiritual  crisis  through  which  he  passed 
while  pastor  in  Indianapolis,  in  1884,  led  him  to  see 
with  new  clearness  that  faith  primarily  involves  a 
decisive  act  of  the  will  in  obedience  to  some  present 
measure  of  spiritual  light.  This  rather  than  theoretic 
belief  of  the  truth  as  a  system  of  intellectual  proposi- 
tions, is  the  chief  element  in  that  '^belief  of  the 
heart"  which  is  ''unto  righteousness."  It  is  also 
the  only  principle  on  which  any  Christian  however 
orthodox  can  grow  in  grace,  and  have  power  to  help 
others  into  light.  A  certain  measure  of  theoretic  be- 
lief is,  of  course,  always  implied  in  an  act  of  faith  ;  and 
may  usually,  in  Christian  lands,  be  taken  for  granted. 

Practically,  however,  what  others  need  from  us,  is 
to  be  ''put  on  the  clue"  to  a  personal  realization  of 
Christ  within  themselves.  This,  the  Holy  Spirit,  al- 
ways and  everywhere,  waits  and  yearns  to  work  in 
the  willing  heart. 

In  1890,  the  writer  as  secretary  of  the  foreign  mission 
society  of  his  denomination,  was  commissioned  to  visit 

7 


8  PEEFACE 

the  mission  fields  of  Asia.  On  that  tour  lie  had  much 
opportunity  to  test,  among  the  heathen,  the  value 
and  practicality  of  his  conceptions  in  dealing  savingly 
with  souls.  Interviews  with  many  inquirers  in  the 
various  lands  visited,  and  frequent  conferences  with 
experienced  missionaries  then  and  since,  have  but 
confirmed  him  in  the  validity  of  the  conclusions 
herein  recorded.  The  great  moment  of  the  subject  is 
sufficient  apology  for  contributing  in  the  way  of  tes- 
timony what  one  may,  towards  the  solution  of  a  ques- 
tion of  ever  growing  interest,  namely,  how  success- 
fully to  lead  men  to  Christ. 

In  the  course  of  the  years  of  varied  experience  in 
evangelical  work,  a  good  many  striking  instances  of 
conversion,  illustrating  the  postulates  laid  down  in  the 
following  chapters,  have  come  under  the  writer's  notice. 
As  he  has  related  from  time  to  time,  the  accounts  of 
how  some  of  these  souls  were  started  in  the  new  life, 
he  has  been  asked  to  commit  the  narratives  to  print, 
in  the  hope  that  they  might  shed  their  light  afar. 

In  the  chapters  which  ensue,  various  incidents 
showing  steps  whereby  particular  individuals  were 
^'put  on  the  clue''  Christward,  are  given,  in  the 
hope  that  they  may  afford  helpful  hints  to  some  per- 
plexed workers  on  the  home  field  ;  to  students,  Sun- 
day-school teachers,  leaders  of  young  people's  socie- 
ties, and  ministers,  and  to  young  missionaries  about 
commencing  their  work  among  pagan  peoples.  To 
this  end  the  special  aid  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  who  alone 
can  give  that  ^^understanding  "  and  skill  which  shall 
'•''  turn  the  many  to  righteousness,"  is  invoked. 

H.  Co  M. 
Boston,  January  10, 1906» 


CONTENTS 


I.  Presuppositions  m  the  Soul- Winner   .      11  j 

Soul-winning  not  a  perfunctory  thing— Implications  i 

in  the  winner — Vision  of  God  presupposed — Something  \ 

to  impart — D.  L.  Moody's  Anointing — Evan  Roberts  i 

— Author's  experience  in  college  days— Similar  crises  j 

in  lives  of  present-day  college  men — A  wife's  impress  j 

on  her  husband — Bishop  Williams  and  his  Japanese  | 

pupil — How  an  army  major  was  reached — Anxiety  i 

for  a  neighbour  rewarded — Idealizing  those  we  would  ] 

save — A  woman  prominent  in  the  Blaine  Campaign,  { 

won — A    timid  farmer,    "doing  the  impossible" —  ;; 

Story  of  Valentine  Burke,  the  Missouri  convict — The  j 

vision  which  inspires.  j 

1 
■\ 

II.  The  Evangelizing  Message  ...      34  -j 

Two  elements  in  the  saving  problem — Finding  and  de-  i 

limiting  the  message — Dr.  R.  A.  Hume's  answer  to  a  \ 

Parsi — What  it  is  to  evangelize — The  aegis  of  an  evan-  . 

gelical  probation — All  men  exist  under  it;  few  realize 

it — A  lawyer  who  "took  under  the  will  " — The  new  i 

potential  heredity  in  Christ — Speculative   beliefs  in                 "  j 

abeyance — Weakness  in  current  use  of  the  Atonement  ] 

— Something  deeper  than  the  Crucifixion  tragedy — 

Meaning  of  redemption  by  blood — A  speaking  emblem  i 

— Under  spell  to  the  redeeming  Christ.  { 

III.  The  Immediate  Practical  Aim    .        .      48  \ 

The  subjective   side   of   the  problem — Dealing  with  i 

children — A    bewildered    agnostic — Putting  on    the  \ 
clue — Gaining  the  confidence — A  wicked  vow  repudi- 
ated— A  Harvard  agnostic  committed  to  his  ideal — 

The  Russian  Baron   Uixkiull's  conversion — Christ's  i 

method  of  giving  light — Disappointment  of  prejudice  ' 

— Our    highest    work — Continuance  of  the  spiritual  I 

life  as  affected  by  true  evangelization.  ', 

d 


10  CONTENTS 

lY.    The  Nature  of  Saving  Faith      .       .      64 

Faith  synonymous  with  doing  the  truth — A  collective, 
executive  act  of  the  soul — Sad  misunderstandings — 
Standing-ground  in  heathen  systems  to  be  utilized — 
Loyalty  to  light  is  faith — Beginning  in  Christ's  school 
can  be  made  anywhere — A  common  tactical  mistake — 
Dealing  with  a  Romanist — The  place  for  objective 
doctrinal  instruction — David  Brainerd  and  the  Indian 
reformer —  Walking  in  the  light  rather  than  living  up 
to  it — Confession  of  George  Romanes — Christ's  method 
that  of  the  laboratory,  experimental. 

V.  Tact  in  Personal  Approach.         .        .      SQ 

The  right  angle  of  approach — Dr.  Hume's  preaching 
in  India — The  personal  equation — A  blaspheming  car- 
penter's conversion — Picking  up  an  inebriate — a 
Japanese  convert — Reaching  the  aged — A  cynical 
blacksmith  won — The  old  brickmaker  paying  his 
vows. 

VI.  Christ^s  Method  of  Self-Disclosure,    111 

Visit  to  India— Test  of  principles— Message  to  Brah- 
mins— Christ's  method  of  illumination  in  Ninth  of 
John — Four  stages  in  process— Principles  involved — 
(1)  Christ  permitted  to  have  His  way— (2)  Divine 
word  acted  on  :  a  German  agnostic — (3)  Light  ac- 
knowledged as  it  came— (4)  Stood  alone— Sequel  of 
visit  and  exposition  of  principles. 

VII.  The  Fields  White  Unto  Harvest       .    129 

Large  harvests  warranted — One  conversion  may  imply 
many — Great  evangelists  personal  workers — Not  all 
however  will  believe — Supernatural  draughts  of  men — 
Christ's  method  at  Sychar — (a)  Found  joy  in  divine 
will— (6)  Established  friendly  relation— (c)  Disap- 
pointed prejudice— (<Z)  Built  on  elementary  faith— 
(e)  Induced  spiritual  thirst— (/)  Awakened  conviction 
for  sin — (g)  Unveiled  a  present  Messiah — (h)  Pre- 
sumed on  work  of  predecessors— Surprise  in  all  re- 
vivals— Expect  great  things. 


Method  in  Soul-Winnin 


g 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOUL- WINNER 

And  do  thou,  when  once  thou  hast  turned  again,  establish  thy 
brethren.— Xwfce.  22  :  32. 

Winning  souls  is  not  a  perfunctory  undertaking. 
The  soul-winner  is  not  a  recruiting  sergeant,  nor  a 
mere  zealot  gaining  adherents  to  a  sect.  He  is  rather 
one  who  seeks  to  add  ^'to  the  Lord"  as  men  were 
^ '  added '^  at  Pentecost,  or  as  expressed  in  Hosea's 
word  '^ betrothed'^  unto  the  Lord  forever.*  The 
achievement  sought  presupposes  much  in  the  winner  j 
that  he  himself  is  the  possessor  of  assured,  personal 
blessing  from  God.  If  one  who  would  win  souls  is  not 
thus  consciously  in  touch  with  God,  it  would  be  well 
to  closet  himself  with  Him  long  enough  to  find  out 
what  obstruction  in  heart  or  life  prevents  commun- 
ion :  to  give  to  it  if  necessary  a  prolonged  season  of 
heart-searching,  until  the  vision  of  God  comes  clear 
and  pronounced.  We  dare  not  say  that  all  men  are 
called  to  be  conspicuously  evangelists  ;  certainly  not 
that  a  given  form  of  emotional  experience  as  such  is 
to  be  expected  by  all.     God  has  His  own  original 

2:19. 
11 


12  METHOD  m  SOUL-WINOTIJ^G 

way  of  self-communication  to  every  man  :  there  is 
doubtless  a  sovereign  element  in  it.  The  bestowal  of 
particular  powers  upon  certain  workmen,  for  exam- 
ple, Whitfield,  Wesley,  Spurgeon  and  Finney,  are 
such  as  all  may  not  claim.  Temperamental  gifts  de- 
termine much.  ^Nevertheless,  I  think  it  may  be  truly 
said,  other  things  being  equal,  that  real  evangelistic 
power  can  coexist  only  with  a  certain  clearness  of 
vision  of  God's  face,  and  as  some  specific  divine 
secret  is  therewith  imparted. 

It  is  a  well  known  fact  that  Mr.  Moody,  before  go- 
ing to  England  on  his  great  evangelistic  campaigns 
in  1871-5,  experienced  a  peculiar  unveiling  of  the 
love  of  God,  although  it  was  a  matter  of  which  he 
rarely  spoke.  He  had  been  a  remarkably  successful 
evangelist  on  many  lines  previously.  At  the  time 
referred  to,  however,  he  had  been  moved  to  un- 
wonted prayerfulness,  in  which  others  joined  him, 
that  he  might  be  filled  with  the  Spirit.  Under  these 
deep  exercises  of  mind,  while  in  New  York,  one  day 
there  broke  upon  him  such  a  realization  of  the  Divine 
Love  that  it  well-nigh  overpowered  him,  so  that  he 
cried  out :  ^'  O  Lord,  stay  Thy  hand." 

This  realization  was  the  earnest,  as  all  the  world 
knows,  of  the  profoundest  spiritual  awakenings  in 
England  and  America  witnessed  within  the  past 
century. 

When  later  Mr.  Moody  returned  to  this  country 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOUL- WINNER  13 

and  entered  on  his  great  meetings  in  Brooklyn, 
Philadelphia,  Chicago,  New  York  and  Boston,  even 
those  who  had  previously  known  him  best  in- 
stantly perceived  the  revolution  which  had  occurred 
in  him,  and  the  new  power  with  which  he  wrought. 

Evan  Eoberts  thus  speaks  of  the  spiritual  exer- 
cises which  preceded  his  own  recent  extraordinary 
testimony  in  Wales : 

"For  thirteen  years  I  had  prayed  for  the  Spirit, 
and  this  is  the  way  I  was  led  to  pray.  William 
Davies,  the  deacon,  said  one  night  in  the  society ; 
^  Eemember  to  be  faithful.  What  if  the  Spirit  de- 
scended and  you  were  absent  ?  Eemember  Thomas ! 
What  a  loss  he  had.' 

"I  said  then  to  myself:  ^I  will  have  the  spirit'  ; 
and  through  every  kind  of  weather  and  in  spite  of  all 
difficulties,  I  went  to  the  meetings.  Many  times,  on 
seeing  other  boys  with  the  boats  on  the  tide,  I  was 
tempted  to  turn  back  and  join  them.  But,  no.  I 
said  to  myself:  ^Eemember  your  resolve,'  and  on  I 
went.  ...  I  went  faithfully  to  the  meetings  for 
prayer  throughout  the  ten  or  eleven  years  I  prayed 
for  a  revival.  I  could  sit  up  all  night  to  read  or  talk 
about  revivals.  It  was  the  Spirit  that  moved  me 
thus  to  think. 

'^One  Friday  night  in  1904,  when  praying  by  my 
bedside  before  retiring,  I  was  taken  up  to  a  great  ex- 
panse— without  time  or  space.    It  was  communion 


14  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

with  God.  Before  this,  a  far-off  God  I  had.  I  was 
now  taken  up  into  the  divine  fellowship  for  continu- 
ous hours.  What  it  was  I  cannot  tell,  except  that  it 
was  divine, — too  divine  to  talk  about.  ^^ 

When  Mr.  Eoberts  afterwards  went  to  school  at 
New  Castle-Emlyn,  he  was  so  afraid  he  would  lose 
the  communion  with  God  that  at  first  he  set  apart  a 
half  hour  daily  for  prayer.  Then,  this  not  sufficing, 
he  gave  successive  days  to  it  and  many  nights  be- 
sides. At  length,  he  felt  impelled  to  leave  the  school 
and  went  to  attend  certain  meetings  held  under  the 
Church  Federation  Evangelists,  led  by  one  Seth 
Joshua.  At  a  certain  morning  meeting,  Mr.  Joshua 
prayed  with  great  earnestness.  In  one  of  his  peti- 
tions he  besought  that  the  Lord  would  ^^  bend  us.'' 
The  Spirit  seemed  to  say  to  Eoberts  :  ^'  That's  what 
you  need,  to  be  bent."  He  was  deeply  exercised 
about  not  being  completely  bent  to  God's  will  for 
him.  Finally,  as  he  says:  *^I  felt  a  living  force 
coming  into  my  bosom.  .  .  .  This  grew  and 
grew,  and  I  was  almost  bursting,  o  .  .  My  bosom 
was  boiling.  What  boiled  in  me  was  that  verse : 
'God  commending  His  love.'  I  fell  on  my  knees 
with  my  arms  over  the  seat  in  front  of  me  ;  the  tears 
and  perspiration  flowed  freely.  I  thought  blood  was 
gushing  forth."  Certain  friends  approached  to  wipe 
his  face.  Meanwhile  he  was  crying  out,  ^'OLord, 
bend  me  I    Bend  me!"     Then  suddenly  the  glory 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOUL-WINNEE  15 

broke.  It  was  Eoberts^s  Peniel  after  the  night  of  re- 
sistance of  the  Angel- Wrestler  at  the  Jabbok. 

Mr.  Eoberts  adds:  ^^  After  I  was  bent,  a  wave  of 
peace  came  over  me,  and  the  audience  sang,  ^  I  hear 
Thy  welcome  voice,  ^  And  as  they  sang  I  thought 
about  the  bending  at  the  Judgment  Day,  and  I  was 
filled  with  compassion  for  those  that  would  have  to 
bend  on  that  day,  and  I  wept. 

^'Henceforth,  the  salvation  of  souls  became  the 
burden  of  my  heart.  From  that  time  I  was  on  fire 
with  a  desire  to  go  through  all  Wales,  and  if  it  were 
possible,  I  was  willing  to  pay  God  for  the  privilege 
of  going. '^ 

But  lest  any  should  say,  these  experiences  are  for 
altogether  uncommon  persons,  let  the  writer,  an  ordi- 
nary Christian  worker,  add  his  modest  testimony  of 
what  came  to  him  in  boyhood,  long  before  he  had  any 
purpose  to  become  a  minister. 

During  my  first  term  in  college,  being  brought  into 
contact  with  more  forceful  types  of  Christian  associ- 
ates than  I  had  previously  known,  and,  suffering  not 
a  little  from  homesickness,  I  began  to  feel  a  deep 
longing  for  a  more  conscious  relation  to  Christ.  I 
sought  it  for  many  weeks,  but  blindly  and  unavail- 
ingly.  One  night,  however,  while  assembled  with  a 
few  companions  at  the  regular  students^  prayer-meet- 
ing— a  meeting  which  I  had  refused  to  give  up,  to 
hear  a  lecture  by  Miss  Anna  Dickinson,  then  electri- 


16  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

tying  the  country  on  themes  connected  with  the  Civil 
War — the  consuming  longing  which  had  possessed  my 
soul  was  rewarded  by  a  new  vision  of  the  Divine 
One,  altogether  unknown  before. 

There  had  been  much  concentration  of  thought  on 
the  theme  of  the  meeting — ''  Christ  in  Gethsemane,'' 
and  we  were  upon  our  knees  in  prayer  when  suddenly 
there  shone  out  to  me  at  least  a  presence  as  of  the  un- 
veiled and  risen  Lord,  This  entirely  supernatural 
glory  seemed  to  suffuse  the  place  with  resurrection 
light,  and  all  the  other  persons  in  the  room  also  were 
spiritually  affected  in  a  way  altogether  uncommon. 
Indeed  what  occurred  that  night  in  that  little  upper 
room  is  entirely  beyond  human  telling.  Probably 
the  form  of  it  was  determined  in  part  by  mental  sug- 
gestion, by  psychic  influence,  by  various  second 
causes,  kindling  the  imagination  at  such  a  time.  Be 
this  as  it  may,  the  reality  of  this  theophany  I  can  no 
more  doubt  than  I  could  deny  my  own  identity.  It 
was  not  conversion,  for  this  had  occurred  at  least  four 
years  previously.  At  all  events,  from  the  time  of 
which  I  speak  the  whole  character,  current  and  out- 
look of  my  life  changed.  The  Scriptures  lighted  up. 
Christian  joy  displaced  depression,  passion  for  souls 
ensued,  courage  triumphed  over  fear  in  public  relig- 
ious exercises.  Other  people  also  recognized  the 
realness  of  the  change,  and  the  whole  providential 


PRESUPP0SITI01i[S  IN  THE  SOUL  WINKEE  17 

course  of  life  since  has  corroborated  the  divineness  of 
the  vision  of  that  night. 

About  that  time  the  college  was  broken  up  through 
the  occurrence  of  a  case  of  smallpox  among  the 
students,  and  I  went  home.  Calling  on  my  pastor  the 
next  morning  and  reporting  the  great  change  which 
had  occurred  in  me,  with  quick  sympathy  he  replied, 
^'The  Lord  has  sent  you  home  in  this  frame  just  at 
the  time  when  we  most  need  you.  The  state  of  relig- 
ion is  low  among  us  :  the  young  people's  meeting  has 
died  out :  you  are  the  means  to  revive  it."  Then 
taking  a  note-book  and  pencil  he  wrote  down  the 
names  of  about  two  hundred  young  people  in  the  town, 
and  putting  it  in  my  hands  said,  ^' There,  go  and 
bring  them  in.  Lead  them  to  Christ.  That's  your 
work." 

Encouraged  by  such  a  proposal,  I  set  about  it.  The 
first  visit  I  made  was  characterized  by  a  soul-contest 
of  hours  resulting  in  the  conversion  of  a  young 
woman.  That  led  to  another  and  that  to  others  until 
an  entire  Bible  class  of  influential  young  persons  sur- 
rendered to  Christ.  From  that  the  work  so  spread 
that  ere  the  summer  was  over  nearly  all  the  persons 
named  in  my  note-book  were  converted  and  added  to 
the  several  churches  of  the  town.  Moreover,  all  this 
work  was  marked  by  the  almost  total  absence  of 
special  preaching,  the  testimony  of  new  converts  to 
new  inquirers  instead,  seeming  to  suf&ce. 


18  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

Wlien  I  returned  to  college  in  the  following 
autumn,  I  was  in  the  afterglow  of  the  realization  of 
that  revival  and  my  Christian  fellow  students  were 
alert  to  hear  accounts  of  it,  and  to  ascertain  its  secret. 
On  occasions  I  was  invited  to  other  towns  and  similar 
revivals  occurred.  In  one  of  these  towns  over  sixty 
converts  came  out  in  a  few  days,  while  within  the  col- 
lege itself  the  revival  spirit,  now  being  alive  in  many 
hearts,  continued  for  years  following,  with  many 
striking  conversions,  some  being  so  smitten  with  con- 
viction that  unable  to  sleep  they  sought  their  Chris- 
tian associates  in  the  night  hours  begging  for  prayer. 

In  relating  the  above  reconstructive  crisis  in  one 
life,  I  do  not  imply  that  such  an  experience  is  excep- 
tional. Probably  it  is  only  typical  of  what  occurs 
sooner  or  later  in  t)xe  lives  of  most  ministers  and  mis- 
sionaries, and  such  others  as  ever  become  effective 
winners  of  souls.  Such  experiences  are  occurring 
constantly  in  connection  with  College  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
and  Student  Volunteer  work.  The  Motts  and  Speers, 
the  Brockmans  and  Galleys,  the  Briggses  and  Sher- 
wood Eddys,  aye,  and  the  Hugh  Beavers  and  Horace 
Pitkins,  of  blessed  memory — all  stand  for  lives 
marked  by  just  such  crises  and  changes  under  the 
wondrous  grace  of  God.  The  place  of  some  such 
realization  at  least  in  principle,  a  special  vision  of 
Christ, — as  antecedent  to  power  to  win  others,  cannot 
be  gainsaid. 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOTJL-WINNEE  19 

Said  Jesus  to  Peter,  ^^  And  I  also  say  unto  thee  that 
thou  art  Peter, — a  rock — and  upon  this  rock — this 
solid  substratum,  product  of  My  Spirit — I  will  build 
My  Church,  and  the  gates  of  Hades  shall  not  prevail 
against  it.  I  will  give  unto  thee  the  keys  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  and  whatsoever  thou  shalt  bind 
on  earth  shall  be  bound — lit.  ^  have  been  bound' — in 
heaven :  and  whatsoever  thou  shalt  loose  on  earth 
shall  be  loosed — ^have  been  loosed' — in  heaven."* 
In  other  words,  the  servant  of  Christ  that  has  been 
brought  to  a  keener  discernment  of  the  Divine  One 
will  have  been  so  brought  en  rapport  with  the  very 
sovereign  purpose  of  God,  as  that  the  keys  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  may  be  said  to  have  been  given 
him,  not  as  in  lieu  of  Christ,  but  as  so  completely 
subject  to  Him  as  that  Christ  can  work  through 
him. 

^'When  thou  hast  turned  again — establish  thy 
brethren.''  ^  Of  course,  no  two  persons  ever  have  a 
divine  manifestation  to  them  in  the  same  form.  It 
may  come  in  the  form  of  some  marked  realization  in 
the  soul  with  or  without  emotion  :  it  may  come  from 
some  calm,  inward  voice  of  the  spirit  co-witnessing 
with  some  specific  Scripture  ;  or  it  may  arise  in  some 
other  way ;  but  in  order  to  power,  it  must  exist.  The 
element  of  reality, — some  vital  touch  with  the  infinite 
One, — must  be  present  before  much  motive  power  can 
^  Matthew  16  :  18,  19.  » Luke  22  :  32. 


20  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

be  engendered  to  reach  out  victoriously  after  others, 
or  before  others  will  respond  to  the  winner's  touch. 

In  the  first  parish  where  I  laboured  lived  a  man, 
who  was  not  only  agnostic  in  his  attitude  towards 
things  religious,  but  even  derided  them,  and  was  wont 
to  chaff  his  wife  on  her  devotion  to  her  church.  The 
wife,  however,  went  on  her  quiet  but  earnest  way, 
living  out  her  religion  in  the  home.  One  morning 
very  early  the  husband  awoke  and  discovered  his 
wife  beside  his  bed  absorbed  in  whispered  prayer. 
Her  pale,  upturned  face  was  fixed  with  intensity  upon 
the  Invisible,  and  her  warm  hand  was  resting  upon 
his  own,  she  supposing  him  to  be  asleep.  As  the 
husband's  eyes  opened  on  the  unexpected  scene,  the 
suggestion  came  like  a  flash  to  his  soul,  ''My  wife's 
God  is  more  real  to  her  than  her  husband  is.  If  she 
is  so  in  earnest  for  my  welfare  as  to  rise  at  such  an 
hour  and  pray  alone  for  me,  it  is  time  I  had  some 
care  for  my  own  soul"  ;  and  he  instantly  arose  from 
his  bed,  knelt  beside  her  and  added  his  own  prayer 
to  hers.  He  gave  his  heart  to  God  on  the  spot,  and 
that  very  morning  came  to  the  early  meeting  at  the 
church  and  announced  his  change  of  heart ;  the  next 
Sabbath  he  united  with  the  church.  The  conviction 
of  reality  in  the  wife's  intimacy  with  God  was  what 
roused  and  brought  him  ;  the  wife  had  something  to 
impart,  which  of  itself  wrought  to  open  the  husband's 
soul. 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOUL-WINNEE  21 

During  my  visit  to  Tokio,  Japan,  I  met  a  superior 
Japanese  youth,  a  convert  of  the  American  Episcopal 
Mission.  I  had  been  asked  to  speak  to  our  native 
church  in  the  locality.  This  young  man  interpreted 
for  me,  and  a  friendship  which  has  continued  till  now 
sprang  out  of  the  incident.  Afterwards  he  told  me 
how  he  was  converted.  He  had  come  to  Tokio  full  of 
ambition  for  the  best  education  he  could  get.  Being 
ill-prepared,  however,  to  enter  the  Imperial  Univer- 
sity, as  he  desired,  he  was  admitted  to  the  Episcopal 
Academy  under  the  saintly  Bishop  Williams.  At 
length  a  fit  of  rebellion  took  possession  of  the  students 
because  of  the  poor  accommodations  in  the  school  and 
this  young  man  and  his  roommate,  a  professing  Chris- 
tian, were  deputized  to  go  to  the  bishop  and  announce 
the  purpose  of  many  of  their  number  to  leave  the 
school.  Said  the  young  man,  '^  We  appeared  before 
the  bishop  with  our  complaint  and  said  that  we  could 
no  longer  put  up  with  the  poor  accommodations  j 
evidently,  the  mission  cared  little  for  our  welfare. 
We  two  students  roomed  over  on  the  north  side  of  the 
building  where  the  sun  never  entered,  and  we  were 
often  chilled  to  discomfort  and  we  would  not  stand  it 
longer.  The  bishop  beamed  upon  us  with  benevolent 
surprise,  and  said : 

<<  ^  Why,  young  gentlemen,  this  will  never  do  ;  you 
are  not  going  to  leave  the  school.  True,  our  mission 
is  slow  in  providing  better  accommodations,  but  they 


22  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINNII^G 

will  come  soon.  Meanwhile,  we  are  bound  to  do  the 
best  we  can  for  our  students.  We  expect  you  young 
men  in  the  future  to  become  the  bishops  and  leaders 
in  the  Japanese  churches.  As  for  yourselves  in  par- 
ticular, I'll  tell  you  what  we  can  do.  I  have  a  good 
warm  room  on  the  sunny  side  of  the  school ;  now  you 
young  gentlemen  come  over  and  occupy  my  room  and 
I  myself  will  go  over  and  take  yours.'  ^Oh,  no!' 
we  both  exclaimed  ;  '  we  would  not  have  you  do  that  j 
we  did  not  mean  that'  'But  that's  what  I  mean,' 
said  the  bishop;  that's  what  will  be  done.'  We 
again  remonstrated  and  my  fellow  student,  a  Christian 
boy,  began  to  weep  with  chagrin  and  brokenness  of 
heart,  and  soon  J  found  I  too  was  weeping.  I  never 
before  had  seen  anything  like  that  and  my  heart 
broke  under  it.  Why,  sir,  there  was  a  light  in  that 
good  bishop's  face  similar  to  that  which  I  think  Saul 
saw  on  the  way  to  Damascus.  I  could  not  stand  it 
and  I  was  converted  on  the  spot."  It  is  ever  so  ;  the 
agnostic  soul  discovers  in  some  follower  of  Christ  a 
surprising  something  which  he  himself  has  not,  and 
the  vision  smites  him  to  penitence  and  faith.  It  is 
the  aureole  on  the  face  of  believers  as  on  that  of  their 
risen  Lord  which  compels  conviction  and  wins  as- 
sent. 

Ten  years  afterwards,  the  young  man  referred  to 
above  renewed  acquaintance  with  me  in  Boston,  an 
earnest  Cambridge  divinity  student.    During  the  last 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOUL-WINNEE  23 

year  he  has  served  as  a  member  of  staff  to  an  impor- 
tant envoy  to  the  United  States,  and  is  identified  with 
the  highest  ideals  for  the  new  Japan. 

Along  with  our  sense  of  deep  blessing  from  God, 
when  it  exists,  will  spring  up  also  the  realization  of 
the  soul-poverty  of  those  who  are  without  God,  and 
the  corresponding  conviction  that  God  waits  to  enrich 
and  fill  such  souls  if  they  but  once  open  to  Him.  I 
was  once  introduced  to  a  singularly  gifted  man  in  my 
parish  who  was  a  major  in  the  Civil  War,  and  who 
after  the  war  won  standing  as  a  man  of  business  and 
in  social  circles.  But,  alas,  he  had  become  addicted 
to  drink,  and  was  rapidly  wrecking  all  his  prospects 
and  breaking  the  heart  of  devoted  relatives.  Through 
a  Mend,  uncommon  personal  interest  in  this  man  was 
aroused.  I  invited  my  new  friend  to  my  home  for 
long  conversations  ;  I  called  at  his  office  again  and 
again,  told  him  of  the  high  hopes  I  cherished  for  him, 
hovered  about  him  for  weeks,  until  the  vision  of  new 
possibilities  for  the  discouraged  man  became  con- 
trolling. Other  friends  cooperated  with  great  earnest- 
ness and  skill.  At  length  the  man  reasoned,  ''This 
must  be  a  divine  concern  which  these  several  friends 
have  for  me ;  no  human  self-interest  would  so  follow 
me ;  now  is  my  time  to  cooperate  with  this  heaven- 
sent power"  J  and  he  did,  and  shortly  to  the  aston- 
ishment of  the  whole  community,  he  publicly  con- 
fessed Christ  and  became  a  winner  of  other  soul^,  his 


24  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

testimonies  to  the  new  grace  received  carrying  great 
weight  to  multitudes. 

Often  when  one  is  in  the  right  way,  a  particular 
soul  is  laid  upon  his  heart  with  great  weight,  until 
he  feels  that  he  cannot  be  denied  his  craving  for  that 
friend's  salvation.  Undoubtedly  it  is  the  divine 
spirit  which  imposes  such  burdens,  and  this  is  often 
evidence  that  the  desire  so  cherished  is  to  be  granted. 
I  recall  such  an  instance.  It  was  in  my  native  town. 
I  had  seen  the  spirit  of  God's  grace  at  work,  bringing 
many  to  repentance.  Among  those  for  whom  my  de- 
sire grew  was  one  man  in  particular  for  whom  I  had 
had  high  appreciation  for  many  years.  He  and  his 
family  were  far  above  the  average  in  intelligence  and 
cultivation  :  as  neighbours  they  were  genial  to  a  high 
degree,  but  they  were  entirely  irreligious,  rarely  at- 
tending church.  At  length  one  night  I  was  awakened 
with  intense  concern  respecting  this  man,  and  could 
not  sleep  again  for  the  depth  of  my  feelings.  I  found 
my  wife  in  a  similar  state  of  mind  respecting  him, 
and  we  arose  to  pray  together  for  him  with  all  our 
powers.  The  next  day  I  made  it  my  first  errand  to 
go  and  see  this  man.  I  was  particularly  anxious  to 
see  him  alone,  and  as  I  went  I  prayed  for  such  an 
opportunity.  Driving  around  a  turn  in  the  road 
under  the  hill  below  his  home,  I  saw  him  coming 
from  his  mill,  which  was  a  few  rods  distant.  The 
Lord  seemed  to  say  to  me,  ^'  There,  I  have  given  him 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOUL- WINNER  25 

into  your  hand."  As  I  came  nearer  I  could  see  the 
signs  of  agitation  in  his  face  and  I  think  he  would 
have  hidden  behind  the  hedge  by  the  roadside,  if  he 
could  have  done  so  unobserved.  This  encouraged 
me.  At  length  meeting  him  face  to  face,  I  said, 
"  Isaac,  I  have  come  after  you  this  morning." 

With  the  familiarity  of  our  earlier  days,  he  replied, 
"•  Henry,  I  know  it,  what  do  you  want  of  me?  " 

I  replied,  ^' Isaac,  so  deep  is  my  interest  in  your 
salvation  that  if  it  were  necessary  I  would  crawl  on 
my  hands  and  knees  for  miles  if  I  could  share  with 
you  my  sense  of  Christ." 

Said  he,  ^'I  have  no  doubt  of  it:  I  have  known 
for  years  how  you  felt  for  me.  I  remember  hearing 
you  pray  aloud  for  me  years  ago  as  you  rode  by  my 
place  on  your  pony  late  in  the  evening  on  the  way 
from  the  church  to  your  father's  house.  I  was  husk- 
ing corn  by  the  roadside  behind  the  stocks  in  the 
moonlight,  and  you  did  not  know  I  heard  you,  but  I 
did." 

^^Well,"  I  said,  ^ that's  true,  I  have  loved  your 
soul  all  this  time,  and  now  I  want  you  to  come 
along." 

^^All  right,"  he  said,  ''I  have  come;  it's  settled 
now."  And  he  invited  me  up  to  the  house.  There 
I  had  further  conversation  with  his  wife,  his  daugh- 
ters, and  others  in  the  family  circle,  and  we  all  knelt 
and  prayed  together.    It  will  easily  be  believed  that 


26  METHOD  IN  SOUL-Wi:t^mNG 

I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  this  entire  family,  to  the 
number  of  five,  shortly  gathered  into  the  church. 
But  what  impressed  me  in  that  case,  as  in  many 
others  in  my  memory,  is  that  multitudes  of  people 
really  feel  divine  emanations  from  us,  if  we  are  in 
the  spirit  of  love  and  grace  towards  them — simply 
yearning  to  impart  those  blessings  to  them — even 
though  we  do  not  speak  a  word.  When,  therefore, 
the  right  moment  comes  for  the  word  to  be  spoken, 
we  are  often  surprised  to  find  the  work  already 
wrought.  The  truth  is  God's  spirit  always  goes  be- 
fore us  J  and  if  we  relied  upon  that  fact  more  abso- 
lutely, we  should  often  find  our  way  prepared,  and 
the  saving  work  done  with  scarcely  a  word  spoken 
on  our  part. 

Then  if  from  the  appreciation  one  has  of  certain 
natural  powers  in  unconverted  people,  he  is  moved 
to  idealize  those  same  powers,  to  think  of  them  as 
they  might  be  if  consecrated  to  Christ,  his  influence 
over  such  people  unconsciously  to  himself  will  grow, 
and  this  will  also  tend  to  the  discovery  of  the  real 
key  to  their  hearts.  There  is  nothing  so  inventive, 
so  discerning  as  love. 

In  a  western  town  where  I  had  a  pastorate  for  a 
period,  there  was  a  high-spirited  woman,  a  former 
schoolmate  of  mine,  who  was  frequently  visited  and 
found  very  open-hearted,  although  somewhat  mysti- 
fied as  to  what  the  religious  movement  in  progress 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOUL-WINNEE  27 

portended  for  herself.  This  woman^s  manner  of  life 
was  entirely  worldly.  She  had  some  notoriety  for 
nerve  and  horsemanship  ;  and  ha^l  gained  reputation 
for  uncommon  public  spirit.  In  the  presidential 
campaign  of  the  previous  year,  when  Mr.  Blaine  was 
a  candidate,  she  had  organized  a  mounted  troop  of 
patriotic  young  women,  who  on  occasions  would  ride 
in  torchlight  processions  with  their  husbands  or  es- 
corts. I  became  intensely  desirous  of  seeing  this  un- 
common woman  a  Christian.  Familiar  as  I  was  with 
this  late  popular  demonstration  on  her  part,  I  thought 
I  saw  how  to  use  it  for  her  welfare.  Accordingly, 
when  I  called  one  day  to  press  home  Christ's  claims, 
the  lady  inquired, 

^^What  is  it  you  want  of  me  anyway  and  what 
would  you  have  me  do?  I  don't  see  that  I  am  so 
very  bad.'' 

I  replied,  *' Probably  not.  But  do  you  recall  how 
prominent,  how  decided,  and  how  fearless  was  the  posi- 
tion you  took  in  the  Blaine  Presidential  Campaign?  " 

^'Indeed  I  do." 

Then  said  I,  ^'  I  wish  you  to  become  as  pronounced 
in  allegiance  to  Jesus  Christ  as  you  were  known  to  be 
for  James  G.  Blaine,  Hhe  plumed  knight  of  Maine.'  " 
She  was  astonished,  but  she  was  impressed.  The  ap- 
peal reached  her  and  she  understood  it. 

^^Well,"  said  she;  ^' that  would  be  a  pronounced 
position  indeed  j  do  you  mean  it  ? "  i 


28  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINOTISTG 

^'Certainly  I  mean  it ;  nothing  less  than  that  will 
do  for  you,  and  in  this  community.  Christ  must  be- 
come supreme,  or  what  others  suppose  to  be  supreme, 
above  all  else  in  your  life.  You  were  not  ashamed  of 
Blaine,  you  will  not  be  ashamed  of  the  Eedeemer  of 
your  soul.  You  cannot  do  anything  by  halves.  This 
is  what  I  want  you  to  do  in  order  that  you  may  assure 
yourself  and  others  what  is  really  supreme  in  your 
life ;  and  in  doing  this,  you  are  certain  also  to  find 
assurance  from  God."  The  ideals  this  woman  had 
allowed  for  herself  in  things  worldly  made  it  impos- 
sible for  her  to  entertain  small  estimates  in  things 
spiritual ;  otherwise  there  would  have  been  little 
reality  in  them,  and  they  would  have  seemed  un- 
worthy of  her.  I  also  doubt  if  terms  less  than  these 
would  have  appealed  to  her.  She  was  startled  at  the 
unexpected  ideal  presented,  but  she  could  not  dismiss 
it  from  her  mind.  A  few  evenings  later  this  proud 
spirited  woman  came  to  one  of  my  meetings,  and  at 
an  opportune  moment  came  directly  to  the  front, 
faced  the  congregation,  and  referring  to  the  conversa- 
tion above  detailed,  concluded  by  saying,  ^' And  now 
I  wish  it  to  be  understood  by  everybody  that  just  as 
publicly  and  decidedly  as  I  was  lately  recognized  by 
citizens  of  this  town  as  devoted  to  the  candidacy  of 
Mr.  Blaine  for  the  presidency  of  the  nation,  so  now  I 
am  committed  to  Jesus  Christ  as  the  King  of  the 
universe  and  of  my  heart."    She  of  course  came  into 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOUL-WINNEE  29 

peace  and  blessing,  and  was  conspicuously  useful  in 
influencing  others  to  a  similar  decision.  On  summer 
nights  she  would  take  a  pair  of  horses  and  a  barge 
and  carry  a  dozen  or  more  young  people  miles  away 
into  the  country  to  certain  meetings  I  was  then  con- 
ducting, that  they  might  sing  and  otherwise  help  on 
the  work  ;  as  prominent  for  Christ  as  for  Blaine. 

The  soul-winner  must  be  in  a  position  to  demand 
large  things,  ideally  high  things,  such  as  at  times 
may  shock  his  fellows  into  attention  and  thoughtful- 
ness.  He  must  cherish  higher  possibilities  for  unre- 
generate  souls  than  they  begin  to  think  he  cherishes : 
vastly  higher  than  they  cherish  for  themselves.  They 
need  to  be  waked  up  and  shaken  out  of  their  own  low 
self-estimates  by  some  spiritual  idealism  which  begins 
to  rate  them  and  their  capabilities  as  God  does.  The 
temptation  is  to  make  too  little  of  the  change  con- 
templated ;  we  make  conversion  too  easy ;  we  talk 
down  to  people,  and  both  we  and  the  ideals  presented 
as  motives  to  win,  make  little  impression.  Con- 
science respects  the  heroic,  even  the  apparently  im- 
possible, if  it  only  be  coupled  with  a  clear  require- 
ment of  the  living  and  everlasting  God. 

I  call  to  mind  a  bashful  young  farmer  in  the  west, 
who  had  grown  up  far  from  the  atmosphere  of  the 
church  and  to  whom  the  habits  of  religious  meetings 
were  unfamiliar,  saying  to  me  when  I  urged  upon 
him  to  come  to  the  prayer-meeting  that  night  in  a 


30  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

neighbouring  farmliouse,  and  openly  confess  with  the 
mouth  his  need  of  Ohrist, 

^'I  never  could  stand  up  and  talk  in  that  way  be- 
fore people,  even  though  I  wanted  to  5  it  would  kill 
me  to  do  it.^^ 

^^Well,"  I  replied,  ^^die  then:  I  know  how  hard 
it  is  for  you,  but  Christ  commands  the  impossible. 
He  told  Peter  to  come  to  Him  walking  on  the  water, 
and  as  long  as  Peter  kept  his  eye  on  the  Lord,  he  also 
walked  the  waves.  He  commands  you  to  confess 
Him  before  men  and  I  shall  expect  you  to  do  it  to- 
night, even  though  you  die  in  doing  it.^'  To  the 
meeting  this  timid  man  came.  When  he  rose  to 
speak  he  laboured  as  if  he  were  Atlas  lifting  the  world 
on  his  shoulders.  The  effort  crushed  the  cowardice 
out  of  him ;  for  before  he  sat  down  he  sang  the  song 
of  the  new  life.  By  faith  he  attempted  the  impossi- 
ble :  he  seized  the  ideal  he  knew.  Christ  met  him  in 
the  act,  and  he  came  into  a  saved  state. 

One's  zeal  for  the  salvation  of  souls,  moreover,  will 
greatly  depend  on  the  attitude  which  the  imagination 
assumes,  whether  it  be  negative  or  positive.  One 
may  picture  to  himself  the  soul  negatively,  in  its  sin 
and  wretchedness  from  which  it  needs  to  be  delivered, 
or  it  may  cherish  the  possibilities,  positively  speak- 
ing, into  which  the  soul  may  be  brought  in  Christ. 
Which  conception  rules  will  make  all  the  difference. 

I  recall  having  seen  some  years  ago  in  a  western 


PEESUPPOSll^lONS  m  THE  SOtTL-WINNEE  31 

city,  two  strikingly  contrasting  pictures,  pictures 
since  used  somewhat  widely  by  Mr.  Moody.  They 
were  likenesses  of  a  notorious  prisoner,  a  Missouri 
criminal  by  the  name  of  Valentine  Burke,  who  for 
twenty  years  was  one  of  the  worst  characters  known 
to  the  police.  The  first  likeness  was  taken  against 
his  will,  and  long  hung  in  the  rogue's  gallery  :  it  was 
labelled  ''  Ko.  1010- A."  While  there  were  marks  of 
power  and  manhood  in  the  features  of  this  likeness, 
yet  they  revealed  desperateness  and  abandonment  of 
character,  and  were  very  revolting.  You  would  not 
have  cared  to  meet  such  a  face  alone  after  nightfall. 
Then  there  was  another  picture  of  the  same  man 
which  we  will  call  picture  ^^ number  two."  The  face 
of  a  man  of  great  dignity,  of  uncommon  calm,  of  real 
nobility  and  spiritual  purity  :  a  lofty  brow,  with  hair 
thrown  back,  in  impressive  pose.  In  short,  it  was 
the  face  of  a  man  fit  to  adorn  the  judge's  bench.  One 
could  hardly  have  believed  this  to  be  a  photograph  of 
the  same  man  as  shown  in  the  other  picture.  But 
seven  years  had  intervened  between  the  two.  The 
grace  of  God  had  entered  that  man,  and  had  renewed 
the  springs  of  life,  and  rewritten  every  line  of  his  face 
as  well.  While  in  the  St.  Louis  jail,  Burke  had  ob- 
tained a  copy  of  a  city  paper  which  published  a  ser- 
mon by  Mr.  ;^Moody,  then  preaching  in  St.  Louis ; 
this  paper  announced  the  topic  of  Mr.  Moody's  ser- 
mon in  a  sensational  headline,  "How  the  Jailer  at 


32  METHOD  m  SOUL-WINm:NG 

Philippi  was  Caught."  Burke  thought  the  reference 
was  to  the  town  of  Philippi  in  Illinois,  a  place  of 
which  he  knew  ;  and  he  began  to  read  what  he  sup- 
posed to  be  jail  news.  He  reasoned  ''  The  jailer  has 
often  caught  me;  now  we'll  see  who  caught  him." 
He  soon  saw  his  mistake,  and  at  first  was  angered ; 
but  he  became  interested  as  he  read  on.  Nine  times 
in  the  sermon  he  came  upon  the  text,  ^'Believe  on  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  thou  shalt  be  saved."  It  im- 
pressed him  so  deeply  that  in  the  cell  that  night  for 
the  first  time  Burke  prayed.  Soon  after  he  believed, 
and  was  assured  of  salvation.  The  jailer  thought 
Burke  was  playing  the  "pious  dodge,"  and  only  sus- 
pected him  the  more.  When  the  case  came  to  trial, 
however,  through  a  technicality,  he  escaped  convic- 
tion, and  was  released.  For  some  months  the  ex-con- 
vict could  find  no  one  so  to  trust  him  as  to  give  him 
steady  work.  He  surmised  it  was  because  the  lines 
of  past  sin  had  made  his  face  so  ugly,  and  he  prayed 
to  God  to  make  him  better  looking.  He  finally  was 
given  a  position  under  the  sheriff  of  the  county,  made 
the  collector  of  the  office,  and  until  he  died  some  time 
afterwards,  Burke  never  disappointed  the  confidence 
reposed  in  him.  On  one  occasion  he  met  a  friend  in 
the  street  and  stopped  him  to  say,  "  Look  at  my  hands 
and  see  what  the  grace  of  God  has  done,  when  I  tell 
you  that  just  now  Captain  Mason  the  sheriff,  put  into 
these  hands  $60,000  to  carry  to  the  bank  for  deposit." 


PEESUPPOSITIONS  IN  THE  SOUL-WINNEE  33 

The  photo  ^'number  two"  was  taken  after  this  great 
change  had  come  about,  and  his  face  so  altered  that 
none  would  recognize  it  as  that  of  the  same  man.  So 
universal  was  the  confidence  which  Burke  won  in  his 
new  life,  that  finally  the  old  picture  which  hung  in 
the  rogue's  gallery  was  handed  over  to  him.  He 
sent  the  originals  of  the  two  likenesses  above  de- 
scribed to  a  Mr.  McPheeters  of  St.  Louis,  who  had 
befriended  him,  and  wrote  on  the  back  of  the  picture 
"number  two,''  this  text  from  the  one  hundred  and 
thirteenth  Psalm,  ''He  raiseth  up  the  poor  out  of 
the  dust,  and  lifteth  the  needy  out  of  the  dung-hill, 
that  he  may  set  him  with  princes,  even  with  the 
princes  of  his  people." 

Now  in  practical  efforts  for  the  salvation  of  lost 
men,  if  we  would  gain  the  higher  inspiration  for  the 
service,  let  the  moral  imagination  particularly  con- 
struct to  itself  the  image  of  man  ''number  two." 
Doing  thus  we  shall  see  as  God  sees,  not  the  "natural 
face" — the  face  of  birth, ^  but  of  the  Neio  Birth.  In 
other  words  we  shall  see  the  divine  possibilities  in 
the  soul;  we  shall  begin  to  love  that  ideal  as  God 
loves  it,  and  cherishing  it,  nothing  will  daunt  us  in 
the  effort  to  secure  its  actualization  in  life. 

*  James  1 :  23. 


II 

THE  EVANGELIZING  MESSAGE 

And  to  Jesus,  the  mediator  of  a  new  covenant.— fie6.  12  :  24. 

As  we  proceed,  there  are  two  things  to  be  kept 
clearly  in  mind,  and  of  which  we  shall  separately 
ffpeak,  namely,  the  objective  evangelizing  message, 
and  the  subjective  process  of  inducing  men  to  come 
into  right  relation  to  that  message.  In  this  chapter 
we  deal  only  with  the  former  matter.  Later  on,  we 
shaU  take  up  the  subjective  side  of  the  problem,  and 
put  large  emphasis  on  it. 

He  who  would  evangelize  effectively  needs  to  have 
a  right  view,  first,  of  the  divinely  wrought  basis  on 
which  evangelization  is  possible.  He  needs  a  clear 
view  of  the  evangelizing  message.  Then  he  must 
follow  also  the  right  process  in  rendering  available 
its  benefits.  The  moment  we  begin  to  think  of  evan- 
gelizing, it  is  natural  to  call  up  the  whole  range  of 
speculative  truth, — take  account  of  our  theological 
^^  stock  in  trade,'' — in  which  we  have  confidence,  but 
Which  we  erroneously  suppose  needs  to  be  grasped  as 
a  whole  by  those  who  would  be  saved ;  and  we  wake 
up  to  find  that  many  do  not  grasp  any  part  of  it. 
If  we  are  to  be  skillful  as  evangelists,  we  must  learn 

34 


THE  EVANGELIZING  MESSAGE  35 

to  delimit  the  content  of  our  message  in  the  interest 
of  strategic  skill. 

I  am  not  now  saying  aught  against  the  holding  of 
a  theological  system  and  a  correct  one.  I  am  simply 
speaking  of  the  way  in  which  we  should  use  it  for 
the  technical  purpose  of  starting  men  Christward. 

At  a  Bombay  missionary  conference,  Dr.  E.  A. 
Hume  was  asked  by  a  Parsi  native  preacher  if  he 
was  accustomed  when  preaching  to  tell  people  that 
they  were  born  in  trespasses  and  sins.  Dr.  Hume 
replied,  '' Never. '^  The  native  inquired,  ''Is  that 
taught  in  the  Bible,  and  do  you  believe  it?'^ 

Dr.  Hume  replied,  ' '  Yes,  it  is  taught  in  the  Bible 
and  I  believe  it,  but  I  don't  preach  it,  because  that 
is  not  part  of  the  good  message  which  I  have  to  give 
to  men.  It  is  hard  enough  to  make  Hindus  realize 
that  they  are  now  in  trespasses  and  sins  for  which 
they  themselves  are  responsible.  If  I  should  say  that 
they  were  born  in  trespasses  and  sins,  they  would 
probably  lay  it  on  their  parents  and  the  more  readily 
excuse  themselves  from  responsibility."  Of  course 
Dr.  Hume  meant  that  in  his  evangelizing  message  to 
Hindus,  he  was  careful  to  focus  everything  upon  the 
point  of  awakening  new  hope  of  immediate  salvation 
through  Christ,  and  while  so  doing  he  kept  more 
speculative  questions  in  abeyance. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  preaching  in  many  pulpits 
is  often  vague  and  ineffective.     It  is  too  general :  or 


36  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINKENG 

its  use  of  theoretic  truth  is  too  disproportionate  to 
be  strategic. 

What  is  it  to  evangelize  ?  And  what  is  the  specific 
message  needful  to  secure  results'?  It  is  of  course 
easy  to  say  that  to  evangelize  is  to  '^  preach  the 
gospel,'^  but  the  word  gospel  in  many  quarters  has 
lost  its  meaning.  At  a  time,  tl^STefore,  when  the 
term  is  used  by  men  as  variant  in  thefi'  interpretation 
of  it  as  Tolstoi,  Edward  Everett  Haiej.  *Sabatier  and 
Dr.  E.  A.  Torrey,  it  cannot  be  quite  eiear  what  is 
meant  by  the  term  ''.  Gospel "  ;  hence  it  needs  defining. 

The  gospel  is  the  ''God-spell."  It  is  that  because 
it  is  news  so  surprising,  so  unexpectedly  gracious  as 
when  understood  brings  us  under  spell  to  God,  a 
divine  enchantment,  a  renewing  fascination,  as  no 
other  message  ever  did  or  could.  It  seems  too  good 
to  be  true,  an  unbelievable  reality  : — that  God  should 
have  provided  Himself  a  lamb  so  sufdcient  for  our 
sins  that  both  their  curse  and  power,  through  our 
faith  in  Him,  may  be  destroyed  forever. 

Be  it  remembered  that  the  word  ''evangelize"  is 
an  exclusively  biblical  word ;  it  would  never  have 
been  heard  of  in  our  world  but  for  the  fact  that  God 
had  something  to  disclose  which  man  could  not  have 
found  out  without  a  revelation.  To  evangelize  is  to 
tell  good  news,  that  which  is  really  news  and  that 
which  is  surprisingly  joyful  news, — a  real  saving 
message.     To  evangelize  is  to  point  out  to  men  how 


THE  EVANGELIZING  MESSAGE  37 

they  may  come  into  a  new  moral  and  religious  status, 
under  a  regime  which  God  had  made  possible  through 
the  sacrificial  work  of  Himself  in  His  Son.  To  evan- 
gelize a  soul  is  to  make  clear  to  it  the  evangelical 
status  made  possible  for  it  by  Christ.  To  evangelize 
is  to  place  in  thought  under  the  aegis — the  protec- 
tion— of  an  evangelical  probation ;  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent sort  of  probation  from  any  that  man  could 
possibly  conceive  for  himself  apart  from  the  Bible. 
The  basis  for  this  new,  this  previously  unthought  of, 
probation  is  of  course  found  in  that  specific  work  of 
Christ  which  was  wrought  by  His  cross.  The  teach- 
ing of  the  cross  as  central  in  Christianity,  expresses 
God's  eternal  and  fathomless  pain  for  man's  sin  and 
His  readiness  to  do  everything  morally  possible  to 
reclaim  him  from  it.  This,  beyond  anything  else 
conceivable,  is  adapted  to  awaken  repentance  and  a 
desire  to  sin  no  more.  The  new  probation  which  we 
are  privileged  to  announce  to  men  as  made  possible 
by  the  cross,  is  that  under  which  all  men  in  the  world 
come  into  being,  even  though  they  do  not  know  it. 
It  is  conditioned  upon  the  fact  that  there  is  a  ^ '  lamb 
slain  (foreordained)  from  before  the  foundation  of  the 
world."  ^  So  great  and  so  originative  is  God's  love 
that  He  purposed  and  provided  this  basis  of  salvation 
from  eternity.  The  whole  actual  divine  government 
for  mankind  takes  its  character  and  form  from  this 
» 1  Peter  1 :  20. 


38  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WmNmG 

redemptive  work  of  God  in  Christ.  This  was  the 
ground  purpose  of  the  universe.  It  was  anterior  to 
creation  and  to  the  incoming  of  sin  upon  earth. 
Every  soul  born  into  the  world  therefore  is  born 
under  a  redemptive  economy, — under  the  segis  of 
grace.  It  is  born  of  course  a  partaker  of  the  sin  of 
the  first  man  Adam  ;  but  it  is  also  born  with  an  in- 
choate, an  incipient,  relation  to  Christ,  the  last  Adam. 
It  has  a  heredity  of  evil  from  Adam,  but  it  has  also 
a  new  potential  heredity  of  grace  from  ''the  last 
Adam.''  ^  But  how  far  from  such  a  conception  are 
the  common  thoughts  of  men  !  It  is  a  thing  too  new, 
too  original  for  them  readily  to  entertain.  Hence 
the  danger  is  that  the  soul  will  fall  in  with  the 
first  heredity,  and  repudiate  its  possibilities  of  new 
heredity  in  Christ.  Hence  the  perpetual  need  of 
preaching  of  the  best  sort. 

Doubtless  most,  perhaps  all,  souls,  do  at  first  re- 
pudiate the  principle  of  this  new  heredity  ;  that  is, 
they  ignore  or  deny  God's  gracious  intention  for  them  ; 
hence  it  is  that  men  need  to  be  evangelized,  even  very 
young  children  need  to  be.  They  need  to  reverse 
their  attitude  where  rebellious  self-will  has  asserted 
itself,  at  that  very  point  where  they  had  repudiated 
their  new  birthright  in  Christ  and  its  claim  upon 
them.  And  all  impenitent  souls  to  the  last  hour  of 
earthly  life  need  to  be  called  upon  to  repent  of  that 
1  Cor.  15:45. 


THE  EVANGELIZING  MESSAGE  39 

repudiation,  and  to  claim  positively  for  themselves 
that  evangelical  status  under  the  atoning  work  of 
Christ  which  was  their  misunderstood  or  despised  new 
heritage.  Hence,  the  ever-present  need  of  the  evan- 
gelist. Both  age  and  youth  supremely  need  to  be 
evangelized :  it  is  at  the  point  just  indicated  that  they 
need  to  be  evangelized,  and  established  in  habits  of  a 
new  personal  relation  to  Christ.  In  order  to  this, 
men  have  to  be  awakened  and  recovered  from  those 
false  conceptions  of  probation  so  common,  especially 
from  legalistic  conceptions,  from  dependence  upon 
mere  outward  morality,  and  from  that  indifferentism 
and  fatalism  which  suppose  that  sinful  situations  can- 
not be  helped,  and  so  must  simply  be  stoically  en- 
dured. 

In  view  of  the  issue  which  I  have  now  presented,  it 
will  be  seen  what  I  mean  by  the  evangelizing  mes- 
sage. It  is  the  message  which  announces  that  on  the 
basis  of  what  Christ  has  done  in  His  eternal  atone- 
ment, a  new  kind  of  probation,  namely  a  probation 
of  grace ' — offering  salvation  by  gift  outright,  on  the 

^  By  the  term  "probation  of  grace,"  we  mean  that  probation  by 
which  one  is  placed  in  new  relation  to  a  person — God  as  seen  in 
Christ — rathei  than  to  a  broken,  abstract  law ;  a  probation  under 
which  the  test  of  character  is  determined  by  one's  penitent  and  be- 
lieving attitude  to  the  personal  Redeemer,  rather  than  to  legal  con- 
formity to  an  abstract  statute.  Man,  in  his  rudimental  state  in 
Eden,  lost  his  one  and  only  opportunity  to  do  that  before  he  fell. 
In  the  garden,  our  first  parents  were  tested  with  respect  to  their 
obedience  to  such  a  law.     Under  the  gospel  system,  the  attitude 


40  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINING 

ground  of  what  Christ  has  done  in  His  new  covenant 
or  will,  exists  for  all,  is  their  new  birthright.  It  is 
therefore  to  be  accepted  by  faith  as  a  free  gift. 

In  my  parish  in  Indianapolis,  was  a  bright  young^  ] 
lawyer  who  occasionally  came  to  church  but  in  a 
rather  cynical  attitude.  He  soon  married  a  young 
woman,  who  was  the  particular  joy  of  the  church,  as 
an  earnest  Christian  worker.  It  was  a  surprise  to 
many  that  she  should  have  formed  an  alliance  with 
the  gentleman  referred  to.  Once  married,  however, 
the  young  woman  found  herself  in  an  agony  of  relig- 
ious concern  for  him  ;  and  of  course  she  prayed  with 
great  intensity,  for  his  conversion ;  and  she  enlisted 
other  friends  to  the  same  end.  For  a  time,  however, 
the  result  seemed  doubtful.  Legally  trained  as  he 
was,  proud  of  his  morality  and  habituated  to  ignore 
all  forms  of  religion,  his  indifference  continued,  to  the 
distress  of  many.  About  that  time,  in  my  mid-week 
meetings,  I  was  giving  a  series  of  Bible-readings  on 
the  ethico-evangelical  acts  of  faith  successively  en- 
joined in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  Starting  from 
the  notable  defect  of  Israel,  namely,  his  disobedience^ 

of  one's  personality  at  the  centre,  towards  the  sacrificial  and  risen 
Saviour  and  Lord — a  new  Master — is  the  vital  matter.  In  this 
latter  conception  we  speak  of  the  probation  as  "new"  or  "al- 
tered." It  is,  of  course,  only  relatively  so.  It  is  really  the 
oldest  conception  of  probation,  the  one  which  God  eternally  en- 
tertained for  man  ;  it  was  new,  only  in  its  historical  manifestation. 
^In  the  reviser's  text  we  have  the  Greek  word  drreideca  (diso- 


THE  EyANGELIZi:N^G  MESSAGE  41 

before  Canaan's  gateway,  Kadesli-Barnea,  I  introduced 
into  the  series  of  readings,  a  study  on  "the  New 
Will,  or  Testament "  of  Christ.  From  the  many  legal 
references  associated  with  the  idea,  I  thought  the 
study  would  interest  this  lawyer  friend,  and  I  gave 
him  a  special  invitation  to  come  and  hear  it :  to  see 
'4f  the  will  would  stand.''  He  accepted,  and  I  pro- 
ceeded with  my  exposition  of  "The  New  Will."  In 
my  study  I  traced  the  parallels  between  the  ordinary 
legal  transaction  of  bequeathing  property  in  a  "Last 
Will  and  Testament,"  and  the  provision  in  Christ's 
"Last  Will  and  Testament"  for  the  spiritual  welfare 
of  all  believers.  I  pointed  out  that  in  the  old  covenant 
as  ministered  by  Moses  two  parties  were  required 
to  the  covenant,  whereas  in  Christ's  new  covenant 
or  will,  it  was  the  act  of  one  party,  ^  namely,  God 
in  Christ.  He  offers  salvation  to  His  heirs  as  a  pure 
gratuity.  The  New  Testament  is  really  a  codicil 
to  the  former  will,  superseding  and  abrogating  it.^ 

In  the  will  of  Christ  I  accented  several  points  in  the 
parallel,  for  example  :  (1)  that  it  was  grounded  on  a 
promise ;  ^  (2)  that  there  was  an  estate  to  be  divided — 
an  eternal  inheritance,*  an  actual  spiritual  value  to  be 
bequeathed,  (3)  that  by  the  Spirit  a  new  principle  of 

bedience)  instead  of  anKTzla  (unbeUef)  as  in  the  received  text. 
Of  course  the  thought  is  of  a  disobedience  which  had  its  root  in 
unbelief.     See  Hebrews  3  :  12,   18,  19 ;   4:6. 

^  Gal.  3:20.  ^Heb.  8:13. 

8  Gal.  3  :  18 ;  Ibid.  4  ;  28.  *  Heb.  9  :  16. 


42  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINMNG 

heirship  was  formed  ^  in  the  regenerate  heart ;  (4)  that 
the  values  in  the  will  were  available  only  on  the  death 
of  the  testator  ;  ^  (5)  and  that  this  will  had  to  be  j)?'o- 
hated  or  passed  uj)on  in  thejudgment  work  of  ChrisVs 
death  recognized  when  He  ascended  to  glory  ;  ^  (6)  and 
that  Christ  as  risen  from  the  dead,  ^'  ever  liveth ''  and 
becomes  the  executor  of  His  own  wilV 

This  view  of  the  objective  truth  had  produced  a 
most  solemn  impression  on  the  meeting,  and  for  a  few 
moments  there  was  profound  silence.  Suddenly,  how- 
ever, my  legal  friend,  to  the  surprise  of  all,  arose  and 
spoke  about  as  follows  : 

^^My  friends,  I  have  been  deeply  interested  as  a 
lawyer,  in  this  presentation.  I  think  the  points  made 
have  all  been  well  taken  ;  but  from  my  point  of  view 
there  is  something  left  out.  Pardon  me  if  I  supply 
it."  Turning  to  two  or  three  other  lawyers  who  sat 
near,  he  remarked,  "  Gentlemen  of  the  legal  fi^aternity 
about  me  here  will  corroborate  the  point  I  make. 
When  a  will  is  probated  in  our  courts,  it  is  well-known 
that  the  legatees,  or  heirs  named  in  the  will,  are  ex- 
pected to  appear  before  the  court  and  by  formal  act 
elect  either  to  accept  what  the  will  allows,  as  expressed 
in  the  terms  of  the  will,  or  they  appeal  to  the  law ; 
they  elect  either  to  'take  under  the  will,'  or  'take 
under  the  law,'  i.  e.,  try  to  break  the  will.     Friends, 

'  Heb.  8  :  10.  '  IMd.  9  :  15-18. 

3  J  hid.  9  ;  84-28.  Ubid.7: 24,  25. 


THE  EVANGELIZING  MESSAGE  43 

I  have  been  casting  about  in  my  mind  to  see  whether 
I  should  get  anything  out  of  the  bequest  if  I  were  to 
appeal  to  the  law.  I  see  no  prospect  of  getting  any- 
thing thus ;  the  will  is  not  likely  to  be  remade  for  my 
benefit  and  I  have  no  hope  that  I  could  break  the 
will.  I  think  the  only  thing  that  remains  for  me  if  I 
get  my  portion  is  to  ^take  under  the  will.'  My 
friends,  I  here  and  now  elect  to  Hake  under  the 
will.' '' 

The  gentleman  sat  down  ;  his  astonished  wife  and, 
indeed,  the  whole  meeting  were  overcome  under  this 
extraordinary  and  original  declaration.  It  was  a  sur- 
prising act,  but  it  was  the  fitting  response  to  the 
evangelizing  message. 

It  is  important  in  all  our  preaching,  however  varied 
the  themes,  so  to  present  truth  as  to  show  the  soul, 
first,  its  evangelical  status  under  Christ,  and  then  its 
evangelical  relations  to  Christ  in  all  the  practical 
conduct  of  life.  It  is  one's  relation  to  Christ  that 
should  determine  his  business  habits,  his  politics,  his 
domestic  and  social  relations,  his  recreations  and  all 
else  he  thinks  and  plans  and  does ;  and  all  this  needs 
to  be  preached  as  implicates  of  Christ's  redemption. 
To  do  this  successfully  in  great  variety  of  form  and 
freshness  of  expression  is  the  supreme  achievement  of 
the  Christian  pulpit.  For  the  failure  to  do  this  well, 
great  numbers  of  people  in  our  congregations  live  and 
die  in  confusion  respecting  the  things  which  God  con- 


44  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

stantly  requires  of  them,  in  the  relations  of  their  com- 
plex human  lives. 

The  indefinite  and  loose  ways  in  which  these  re- 
lations have  often  been  conceived  and  stated,  are 
doubtless  fundamentally  due  to  the  vagueness  which 
prevails  respecting  the  nature  of  Christ's  atoning 
work,  and  its  implicates.  Any  marked  increase  in 
evangelistic  power  which  shall  bring  that  wide-spread 
revival  for  which  many  long,  can  come  only  with  the 
emergence  of  the  ministry  from  enveloping  mists 
respecting  the  cross  of  Christ.  That  cross  must  be 
interpreted  with  more  discrimination,  clearness  and 
passion  than  heretofore.  Indeed  there  can  be  no 
heavenly  passion  in  the  pulpit,  where  the  divine 
meanings  of  Christ's  cross  are  indefinitely  conceived, 
superficially  felt,  or  vaguely  stated. 

It  may  be  timely  to  hint  in  passing  one  important 
distinction,  which,  if  it  alone  was  grasped,  we  think 
would  go  far  to  clear  away  some  obscurities  which 
greatly  becloud  the  gospel  message.  This  distinction 
concerns  the  very  nature  of  this  message  on  which  we 
have  been  focusing  attention.  It  may  appropriately 
be  mentioned  here.  We  refer  to  the  distinction 
between  the  cross  of  the  atonement  and  the  tragedy 
of  the  crucifixion.  These  two  things  lie  side  by  side 
in  history ;  but  they  represent  opposites  in  principle. 
The  tragedy  represented  man  at  his  worst ;  it  was  the 
crime  of  the  ages,  sin  at  its  worst.    The  cross  of  the 


THE  EVANGELIZING  MESSAGE  45 

atonement  was  the  sublimest  act  in  the  moral  history 
of  God ;  it  was  the  provision  of  His  last  will  and 
testament  for  the  salvation  and  spiritual  enrichment 
of  man  ;  it  was  God  at  His  best  j  it  represented  what 
was  being  enacted  on  the  divine  side  of  the  central 
event  in  earth's  history.  It  represented  a  sacrifice 
on  God's  part  which,  while  it  was  historical,  was  also 
eternal  in  principle ;  it  cost  the  Father  as  much  as  it 
did  the  Son  ;  it  was  wholly  voluntary  ;  it  adequately 
compassed  the  sin-problem  of  the  universe ;  it  was 
adapted  to  cure  sin  and  to  recover  believing  mankind 
from  its  curse  and  power. 

That  divine  transaction  and  the  implied  relations 
of  mankind  to  it,  determine  for  every  one  the  kind 
oi  being  he  is  to  be,  the  kind  of  life  he  is  to  live,  and 
the  kind  of  destiny  he  is  to  seek.  To  ''believe  on  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ"  is  to  accept  for  oneself  by  an  act 
of  will  as  well  as  heart, — by  an  executive  act  of  the 
soul, — the  relations  under  the  probation  of  grace 
which  God  purposes  for  him.  The  cross  is  to  form 
the  new  motive  power  in  his  life  under  the  spell  of 
which,  properly  understood,  man  is  to  live,  move 
and  have  his  new  being.  This  is  to  render  evangelical 
the  whole  habit  of  the  new  life  in  Christ :  it  is  to 
render  evangelical  all  practical  ethics ;  for  the  ethic 
that  is  not  more  than  ethical,  even  evangelical,  is 
unethical  for  a  fallen  human  being  intended  to  be 
redeemed. 


46  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING  i 

In  the  light  of  the  foregoing  statements  it  will  be 

seen  that  when  the  Bible  speaks  of  redemption  "by  i 

the  blood  of  Christ,"  it  means  redemption  through  the  \ 

self-sacrificing  work  of  God  in  Christ  of  which  His  \ 

blood  is  the  symbolic  life-principle.  ' 

In  the  museum  connected  with  the  monument  to   1  j 

Abraham    Lincoln    at  Springfield,    Illinois,    among  ' 

other  relics  suggestive  of  the  spirit  and  mission  of  i 

the    great    emancipator    of   four  million  slaves,    is  : 

treasured  a  piece  of  the  rich  gown  worn  by  Laura  ! 

Keene,  the  actress,  in  Ford's  theatre,  Washington,  , 

on  the  tragic  night  when  Lincoln  fell.     After  the  ! 
fatal  shot  of  the  assassin,  Miss  Keene  sprang  to  the 

box  and  caught  in  her  lap  the  head  of  the  slain  i 

president,  while  the  blood  from  the  oozing  wound  \ 

saturated  a  portion  of  her  garment.     After  the  event,  | 

that  blood-stained  breadth  was  cut  from  the  gown,  ; 

sent  to  Springfield  and  preserved  as  the  speaking  '■ 

symbol  of  the  great  sacrificial  life  which  Lincoln  j 

lived  even  unto  death,  on  behalf  of  the  redemption  | 
of  the  black  slaves  of  the  South.     Could  we  imagine 

one  of  those  redeemed  men  on  a  visit  to  Lincoln's  ; 

tomb  looking  at  that  emblem  and  properly  remaining  ! 

indifferent  to  its  appeal  ?    Nay,  rather,  we  would  say  ' 
that  henceforth  with  a  new  abandon  of  personality 
the  ransomed  man  should  live  his  life  spellbound  to 
the  moral  majesty  of  the  offering  of  the  great  presi- 
dent on  his  behalf.     For  that  man^  repentance  would 


THE  EVANGELIZING  MESSAGE  47 

mean  repudiation  of  any  past  indifference  to  the  price 
paid  for  his  emancipation  ;  and  faith  would  mean  a 
new,  thorough  resignation  of  himself  to  the  moral 
mastery  of  the  great  ideals  for  which  the  name  of 
Lincoln  stands.  Life  henceforth  for  him  would  mean 
the  acceptance  of  his  new  probation  as  a  freedman, 
with  all  the  fascinating  possibilities  of  his  new 
citizenship  as  a  redeemed  man.  The  evangelizing 
message  for  the  freedman  of  the  South  would  be  the 
new  potentialities  made  his  through  the  priceless 
sacrifices  of  the  Civil  War  culminating  in  the  de- 
votement  of  the  nation's  head  to  his  redemption. 

And  so,  bearing  in  mind  the  inadequacy  of  the 
human  illustration,  the  evangelizing  message  to  a 
world  of  sinful  men,  is  the  proclamation  of  the  new 
and  relatively  speaking,  altered  probation  made  pos- 
sible to  men  through  the  sacrificial  lamb  eternally 
slain  for  them. 

The  wise,  tender,  divinely  persuasive  presentation 
of  this  message,  this  or  nothing  will  ever  evangelize 
and  hold  under  speU  to  God,  this  world, — that  is. 
Christianize  it. 


Ill 

THE  IMMEDIATE  PEACTICAL  AIM 

How  can  I  except  some  one  shall  guide  me  ? — Acts  8  :  31. 

We  now  come  to  the  subjective  side  of  our  problem. 
In  the  effort  to  win  the  soul  of  a  given  individual,  the 
form  of  the  effort  will  greatly  depend  upon  the  moral 
and  even  the  mental  attitude  which  the  soul  sought 
is  supposed  to  hold.  Often  there  is  correct  belief 
respecting  the  fundamental  Christian  facts,  such  as 
the  Saviourhood  of  Christ,  His  atoning  work  and  the 
rightness  of  discipleship  to  Him  ;  and  little  more  is 
needed  than  so  to  win  the  confidence  of  the  soul  as 
sympathetically  to  help  it  to  yield  the  will  in  believ- 
ing trust  to  truth  already  known.  Probably  really 
Christian  parents  in  dealing  with  their  children,  and 
Sunday-school  teachers  with  their  simple-hearted 
pupils,  will  commonly  be  successful  even  with  lim- 
ited skill,  if  their  effort  only  be  whole  hearted  and 
sympathetic. 

There  are,  however,  great  numbers  of  people  of 
maturer  years,  especially  in  times  like  ours,  who 
are  in  great  suspense  and  uncertainty  of  mind  re- 
specting speculative  interpretations  of  Christianity, 
and  yet  who  are  not  unfriendly  to  the  consideration 
of  practical  discipleship  to  Christ.     There  is  there- 

48 


THE  IMMEDIATE  PEACTICAL  AIM      49 

fore  occasion  for  much  careful  thought  in  defining  to 
oneself  just  how  to  proceed  in  direct  efforts  for  these. 
Many  are  of  vacillating  habit  or  disposition,  or 
argumentative  in  mind,  and  so  have  become  torpid 
and  inactive  in  reference  to  God  :  they  are  befogged, 
in  the  dark,  and  sincerely  sceptical  concerning  the 
realities  claimed  for  Christian  experience.  They 
thus  settle  into  chronic  agnosticism.  How  shall  we 
deal  with  these  ?  What  should  be  our  practical  and 
immediate  aim?  We  answer  in  one  sentence,  "put 
them  on  the  clue''  through  some  subjective  com- 
mittal of  themselves,  whereby  in  the  end  they  will 
come  to  the  needed  realization  of  God  and  divine 
things.  Wherever,  however,  any  such  soul  comes 
into  new  spiritual  realization  and  so  is  consciously 
saved,  we  may  be  sure  it  is  always  through  the 
energy  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  on  the  ground  of  the 
atonement  of  Christ — the  atonement  which,  in  God's 
"nature  of  things,"  is  eternal  reality,  however  im- 
perfectly it  is  grasped  intellectually. 

I  recall  a  conversation  with  an  agnostic  rela- 
tive of  mine,  a  typical  instance  of  the  class  just 
referred  to,  which  may  make  clear  our  principle. 
This  relative  was  a  man  of  much  thought  and  read- 
ing, bred  in  a  family  of  pronounced  Christian  faith, 
but  the  marked  exception  in  the  household  who  had 
shown  disinclination  to  accept  Christianity ;  and  he 
was  apparently  candid  in  his  position.    His  mind, 


50  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WmmKG 

however,  was  argumentative  in  type :  he  lived  in  the 
realm  of  theory,  and  to  him  Christianity,  so  readily 
apprehended  by  his  family  relatives,  seemed  wholly 
out  of  reach.  As  we  were  conversing  together  one 
day,  he  suddenly  inquired  : 

^' How  do  you  explain  all  those  mysterious  things 
in  the  Bible?''  by  which  he  meant  the  realities  of 
supernatural  revelation  of  God  as  a  whole. 

I  replied,  "I  don't  explain  them:  I  take  them 
in  the  main  just  as  they  stand ;  I  can't  explain 
them." 

^^Why,"  answered  he,  ^'I  thought  you  ministers 
pretended  to  explain  all  these  things." 

I  replied,  ^']^o,  we  don't;  we  expect  to  have  the 
explanation  some  time."  Then  turning  to  him,  I 
inquired : 

"And  now,  how  do  you  explain  them?  These 
problems  are  as  much  yours  as  they  are  ours." 

''Oh,"  he  replied,  "I  can't  make  anything  of 
them  ;  they  are  all  Greek  to  me." 

"Exactly,"  I  answered;  "but  in  one  respect  at 
least  we  believers  have  this  advantage  over  you ; 
we  have  found  the  clue,  the  key,  to  the  explanation 
of  these  things  now  so  far  beyond  us ;  and  that  is 
vastly  better  than  nothing. 

f  "The  case  is  like  this ;  suppose  you  and  I  were  out 
in  the  depths  of  a  vast  forest ;  night  comes  on,  and 
even  after  the  day  breaks  no  sun  appears,  and  the 


THE  IMMEDIATE  PEACTICAL  AIM       51 

heavens  are  dark  with  clouds.  You  finally  speak  up 
and  say, 

^'  ^We  are  lost.  ^ 

^^  I  reply,  '  As  for  you,  you  are  lost ;  you  know  not 
even  the  points  of  the  compass.  Quite  so.  But  as  for 
me,  while  I  am  your  companion  in  the  circumstances, 
I  still  know  the  trail.  I,  no  more  than  you,  can  see 
the  open  ;  but  follow  me,  and  I  will  bring  you  out  at 
last.  This  is  vastly  better  than  stark  bewilderment. ' '  ^ 
To  this  he  had  no  reply  to  offer.  He  could  simply 
inquire  how  I  found  the  trail  when  he  had  missed  it, 
and  this  gave  me  opportunity  to  show  him  that  there 
were  deep,  experimental,  subjective  tests  of  richer 
worth  than  all  possible  speculative  ones,  whereby 
one  could  progressively  find  his  way  into  the  truth 
of  God.y  These  experimental  tests  involving  the 
action  of  the  heart,  the  conscience  and  the  will,  he 
had  never  applied  to  the  problem,  and  of  course  he 
had  thus  shut  himself  out  from  many  precious 
secrets.  This  was  all  I  could  do  for  him  ;  give  him 
my  testimony  as  a  real  witness  and  explain  to  him 
how  to  get  on  the  clue  ;  he  must  then  live  the 
amount  of  faith  possible  to  him,  hoping  that  step  by 
step  the  explanation  of  the  deep  mysteries  of  revela- 
tion would  come  clear  to  him.  ''The  secret  of  the 
Lord  is  with  them  that  fear  Him,'^  and  not  with  those 
who  stand  outside  the  truth  and  merely  patronize  it 
as  theory. 


62  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINNIKG 

Of  course  one  may  wholly  fall  to  induce  his  fellow, 
especially  if  his  heart  has  become  embittered  and  his 
will  perverted,  to  make  the  experimental  test.  In 
such  a  case,  however,  the  wicket-gate  has  been 
pointed  out  5  the  real  and  only  key  to  the  situation 
has  been  offered.  If  now  the  soul  perishes,  it 
perishes,  a  moral  suicide.  The  skirts  of  his  guide 
are  clear.  One  perishing  thus  is  not  a  truth  lover, 
and  for  such  there  is  no  salvation,  neither  in  this 
world  nor  in  the  world  to  come. 

We  are,  however,  persuaded  that  great  numbers 
all  about  us  are  lost  to  Christ  and  the  church  because 
of  the  lack  of  skill  on  the  part  of  those  who  are  sup- 
posed to  be  competent  spiritual  guides  in  affording 
them  a  method  of  escape  out  of  religious  obscurity 
and  confusion  into  the  path  of  clear  and  growing 
light.  There  are  teachers  enough  who  can  set  forth 
the  doctrines  of  Christianity,  who  can  give  most  re- 
fined definitions  of  the  new  birth,  atonement, 
justification,  etc.,  who  yet  prove  highly  incompetent 
to  make  clear  to  men  their  actual  relation  to  Christ. 
The  secret  of  success  is  back  of  this.  It  is  in 
managing  through  love  and  sympathy,  and  the 
tuition  of  the  spirit  of  God,  to  get  so  near  to  the 
soul,  to  so  win  its  confidence  as  to  discover  the  secret 
of  agnostic  difficulty,  and  the  real  point  where  the 
remedy  is  to  be  applied.  In  most  cases  the  soul  to 
be  won  himself  must  and  will,   if   followed  with 


THE  IMMEDIATE  PEACTICAL  AIM       53 

sufficient  love,  give  up  the  key  to  Ms  own  difficulty. 
This  once  gained,  it  remains  but  to  turn  back  the 
bolt,  enter,  and  lead  the  soul  to  Christ. 

Some  years  ago  in  Indianapolis,  I  was  preaching  to 
a  large  evening  congregation  on  the  necessity  of  for- 
giveness of  injuries,  if  such  are  cherished,  as  a  condi- 
tion of  securing  the  peace  of  God.  As  the  sermon 
progressed,  I  observed  that  the  head  of  a  man  sitting 
directly  before  me  went  down  on  the  back  of  the  pew 
before  him.  In  this  attitude  the  man  remained 
throughout  the  sermon  and  even  after  the  service 
concluded.  The  benediction  pronounced,  I  ap- 
proached the  man  and  found  him  under  high  tension 
of  feeling.  The  congregation  having  withdrawn  I 
drew  from  him  this  story  : 

^' After  the  Civil  War  |I  went  from  the  North  into 
one  of  the  southern  states  as  an  ambitious  young 
lawyer  and  politician.  I  soon  rose  to  some  promi- 
nence and  became  a  candidate  for  public  office.  Dur- 
ing the  heat  of  the  campaign  in  which  feeling  ran 
high,  one  night  when  I  was  in  the  midst  of  a  campaign 
address  in  the  open  air,  a  political  enemy  drew  a  pis- 
tol and  shot  me  through  the  arm  destroying  this  elbow 
joint,  as  a  result  of  which  I  am  crippled  for  life.  My 
enemy  secreted  himself,  was  protected  by  the  author- 
ities, and  although  I  sought  him  for  months,  to  this 
day  I  have  never  overtaken  him ;  but  I  have  made  a 
vow  that  if  I  ever  meet  him  anywhere  in^this  world,  I 


54  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

will  kill  him  on  the  spot.  Now,''  continued  my 
friend,  "you  have  been  teaching  here  to-night  that  no 
man  with  resentment  towards  his  fellow  man  in  his 
heart  can  have  hope  of  divine  forgiveness  :  then  what 
about  that  vow  of  mine  ?  " 

Of  course  this  man  was  revealing  the  very  gateway 
to  the  citadel  of  his  being,  and  himself  in  the  light  of 
an  awakened  conscience  was  hinting  to  me  that  I 
might  enter. 

I  gladly  accepted  the  intimation,  and  the  convicted 
man  having  been  led  to  renounce  his  evil  vow,  sur- 
rendered to  Christ  and  the  sense  of  forgiveness  im- 
mediately followed.  Observe,  however,  that  the  ac- 
tion of  this  penitent  was  primarily  a  moral  rather 
than  an  intellectual  act — the  application  of  an  experi- 
mental test  to  the  fidelity  of  God,  and  it  was  promptly 
honoured.  There  was  a  clue  to  that  soul' s  deliverance. 
The  confidence  of  the  soul  was  somehow  sufficiently 
gained  to  enable  me  to  perceive  the  secret,  and  add- 
ing my  sympathy  and  prayer  to  his  disclosure  of  him- 
self, the  saving  work  was  easily  wrought. 

Until  such  secret  is  gained,  promiscuous  efforts  to 
convert  people  resemble  a  firing  at  random  upon  the 
hills  surrounding  Port  Arthur,  instead  of  ascertaining 
the  susceptible  points  in  fort  after  fort,  and  so  follow- 
ing the  path  to  conquest. 

We  who  are  ministers,  trained  as  we  are  to  consider 
truth  in  systematic  theological  forms,  are  prone  to 


THE  IMMEDIATE  PEACTICAL  AIM       55 

suppose  that  as  we  are  to  maintain  our  faith  firmly, 
so  in  method  also  we  are  to  stand  formally  on  our  own 
dogmatic  ground,  and  labour  to  bring  men  over  to  our 
way  of  thinking,  theologically.  Of  course  we  are  to 
maintain  our  ground  ;  and  yet  tactically,  in  a  true 
pedagogic  method,  it  is  essential  that  we  should  go 
over  on  to  the  territory  occupied  by  the  mind  we 
would  lead,  and  look  at  things  from  his  point  of  view 
long  enough  to  get  into  sympathetic  touch  on  some 
single  practical  ideal,  and  thus  move  the  discouraged, 
helpless  one  to  take  one  brave  unselfish  step  out  of 
himself  into  a  larger  realization  of  truth;  such  a 
realization  can  come  only  through  such  a  subjective 
act.  It  is  impossible  to  force  our  view  of  truth  into 
the  mind  of  another.  We  must  learn  to  take  account 
of  even  the  minimum  of  truth  held  by  him,  and  then 
encourage  the  moral  resolve  to  act  upon  the  ray  of 
light  possessed.  Thus  only  can  any  one^s  measure  of 
light  be  increased,  and  the  soul  itself  experience  a 
personal  first-hand  realization  of  God. 

As  illustrative  of  this  principle  I  give  an  incident 
which  occurred  during  my  pastorate  in  Minneapolis. 
I  was  invited  by  President  Northrup  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Minnesota,  to  a  parlour  lecture  on  Eussian 
literature  to  be  given  one  evening  at  his  home  by  an 
interesting  and  gifted  young  Russian — a  graduate  of 
Harvard  University.  He  had  been  at  one  time  a 
Nihilist  in  theory,  a  rank  materialist,  at  times  most 


56  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINOTNG 

pessimistic  in  Ms  view  of  life,  and  often  had  been 
tempted  to  destroy  himself.  Betimes  he  sought  con- 
verse with  leading  philanthropists  in  Boston  and  else- 
where, seeking  with  his  noble,  impulsive  nature  in 
some  way  to  relieve  the  distresses  of  poverty  and 
wretchedness  characteristic  of  great  cities,  but  with 
little  practical  outcome.  He  was  now  giving  the 
lectures  referred  to  in  cultivated  parlour  circles  east 
and  west.  In  the  lecture  I  heard,  I  discovered  a 
characteristic  and  plaintive  note  as  he  sought  to  in- 
terpret the  various  authors  with  whom  he  dealt,  par- 
ticularly Tourguenieff.  It  was  the  principle  of  self- 
renunciation  and  its  correlative  emergence  into  the 
after-peace  which  characterizes  real  self-abandonment 
to  moral  light.  This  was  the  precise  principle  into 
the  deep  reality  and  meaning  of  which  after  a  period 
of  long  spiritual  depression  I  personally  was  initi- 
ated through  the  grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  in  the 
second  marked  crisis  in  my  life,  which  occurred  while 
I  was  a  pastor  in  Indianapolis,  referred  to  in  the  pref- 
ace. The  passing  of  that  crisis  disclosed  to  me  how 
heterodox  in  heart  one  may  be,  if  he  is  in  a  wrong 
state  of  will,  while  yet  being  very  orthodox  in  head. 
This  experience  greatly  altered  my  conception  of 
faith,  and  changed  the  whole  practical  method  of  my 
dealing  with  agnostic  souls. 

The  man  referred  to  greatly  attracted  me,  as  one 
whom  I  believed  was  groping  for  light  and  having  my- 


THE  IMMEDIATE  PEACTICAL  AIM       57 

self  had  a  profound  experience  on  that  principle,  I 
hoped  I  might  help  him.  At  the  time,  however,  he 
was  far  enough  from  faith  in  any  form  of  evangelical 
truth.  But  this  I  thought  quite  subsidiary  for  the 
time.  I  observed  in  a  daily  paper  a  few  days  after- 
wards that  this  friend  had  been  invited  to  attend  a 
meeting  of  ministers  of  the  liberalistic  wing,  in  the 
city.  The  report  of  the  meeting  which  I  read  also 
stated  that  when  this  Eussian  gentleman,  although  a 
guest  of  the  meeting,  came  to  speak,  he  rather 
strongly  reflected  on  the  essayist  of  the  morning,  in- 
timating that  he  had  not  thought  through  his  ques- 
tion, and  suggesting  that  a  ''lonely  meditation  of 
about  forty  days  in  the  desert  would  probably  lead 
the  writer  to  burn  his  paper."  Putting  together 
these  two  things  in  the  temper  of  the  Eussian — his 
appreciation  of  the  renunciatory  principle  and  his 
moral  courage,  I  was  led  to  invite  him  to  lunch  with 
me.  We  were  entire  strangers  to  each  other,  but  we 
were  soon  in  a  close  heart  to  heart  converse,  respect- 
ing the  motif  of  his  lectures.  I  was  persuaded  he  was 
a  sincere  seeker  after  truth.  I  simply  sought  at  this 
time  to  draw  him  out,  and  at  length  astonished  him 
by  asking  him  to  come  to  my  church  the  following 
Sunday  evening  and  address  my  congregation  on  any 
theme  he  might  choose.  He  was  of  course  amazed 
that  an  orthodox  minister  who  knew  so  little  of  him 
should  extend  such  an  invitation  and  hesitated,  saying, 


58  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

"What  will  your  people  think  of  me,  a  dilettante 
lecturer  in  swallow-tails,  known  chiefly  in  ladies' 
parlours,  appearing  in  place  of  their  minister?" 

"Oh,''  I  said,  " of  course  I  myself  will  be  there ;  I 
shall  introduce  you,  express  my  appreciation  of  your 
message  as  far  as  I  have  heard  it  and  give  you  carte 
Uanche  to  express  yourself." 

I  was  aware  that  I  took  some  risk,  but  I  felt  certain 
that  the  best  thing  I  could  do  for  such  a  man  was  to 
disappoint  his  prepossession  of  mind  that  all  ortho- 
dox people  are  necessarily  narrow  and  intolerant.  I 
took  pains  to  explain  the  situation  a  little  later  to 
my  deacons  who  approved  my  course  in  the  circum- 
stances, and  we  all  awaited  the  outcome  with  prayerful 
interest.  My  Eussian  friend  appeared,  showing  signs 
of  some  agitation,  but  evidently  in  earnest  not  to 
disappoint  the  courtesy  extended.  His  address  was 
upon  Tolstoi  and  although  by  no  means  adopting  his 
views,  my  friend  reiterated  that  note  of  self  renuncia- 
tion in  order  to  higher  life,  which  he  had  declared  to 
be  so  central  in  the  previous  lecture  I  heard.  This 
principle  of  course  is  vital  in  Christianity,  although 
at  the  time  I  think  the  man  scarcely  knew  it.  We 
thanked  him  for  his  lecture,  assured  him  of  our  in- 
terest in  him,  and  for  the  time  parted. 

The  incident  passed,  and  my  friend  left  for  Boston 
with  the  promise  to  write  me.  It  was  not  long  until 
I  received  a  letter  giving  an  account  of  intense  exer- 


THE  IMMEDIATE  PEACTICAL  AIM       59 

cises  in  secret  prayer,  of  long  walks  into  the  country 
by  himself  alone,  on  one  of  which  occasions  he  had 
found  a  secluded  spot  and  bowed  down  before  the 
Saviour  of  the  world  and  accepted  His  atoning  sacri- 
fice in  his  behalf,  and  was  now  rejoicing  in  Him  as 
his  Eedeemer.  I  was  not  surprised.  He  further 
asked  if  I  would  baptize  him  in  case  he  would  come 
back  to  Minneapolis.  I  of  course  assented,  and  he 
came.  His  second  appearance  before  my  congrega- 
tion with  the  testimony  of  profound  Christian  ex- 
perience, evangelical  to  the  core,  was  received  with 
amazement  and  wide  rejoicing.  The  event  also  com- 
manded very  general  attention  in  the  city  and  opened 
the  way  for  numberless  conversations  with  men  of  his 
class  who  perhaps  would  not  have  opened  their  mind 
to  any  minister  whatever. 

The  point  in  method  was  this.  I  seized  upon  the 
modicum  of  truth  which  I  perceived  this  man  held. 
I  presumed  upon  it,  encouraged  him  to  risk  himself 
upon  it,  and  shortly  in  so  doing  he  came  into  a  new 
state.  The  man  was  put  upon  the  clue  to  his  own 
first-hand  realization  of  Christ,  and  it  led  him  to  the 
goal. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  characters  in  attend- 
ance upon  the  late  Baptist  Congress  in  London  was 
Baron  Woldemar  Uixkiull,  another  Eussian,  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  greatly  persecuted  Baptist  churches 
of  that  empire.     He  is  a  man  of  wealth,  living  on 


60  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

his  baronial  estates  in  Esthonia,  one  of  the  Baltic 
provinces.  He  was  brought  up  in  luxury  amid  the 
nobility,  and  as  a  child  was  often  on  the  knees  of  the 
great  Prince  Bismarck,  who  was  a  frequent  visitor  at 
his  father's  palace.  During  an  intimate  conversation 
I  had  with  him  this  summer,  I  drew  from  him  the 
story  of  his  conversion.  He  was  for  years  an  agnostic, 
having  no  sort  of  light  upon  the  great  spiritual  prob- 
lems of  the  soul.  Finally,  through  the  reading  of 
Tolstoi's  writings,  he  became  convinced  that  there 
was  some  reality  in  the  gospel  story  of  Jesus  Christ. 
He  began  to  read  the  gospels.  This  further  led  him 
to  pray,  but  in  this  limited  way  :  '^  Oh,  God,  if  there 
be  a  God  in  this  universe,  make  Thyself  known  to 
me."  And  very  shortly,  as  he  thus  concentrated  his 
soul  upon  the  supposition,  the  mere  hypothesis,  that 
there  might  be  a  God,  and  challenged  Him  to  disclose 
Himself  to  him,  suddenly,  the  light  broke.  He  felt 
a  sense  of  the  deepest  peace,  and  turning  again  to 
the  Bible,  he  found  it  luminous  from  end  to  end 
with  the  explanation  of  the  soul's  spiritual  history, 
and  with  the  assurance  that  he  himself  was  God's 
child.  He  shortly  after  led  his  wife  into  the  same 
realization,  and  ever  since,  as  a  layman,  has  preached 
the  gospel,  given  himself  to  building  chapels  for  the 
poor,  and  in  other  ways  evincing  the  profound  nature 
of  the  divine  change  in  his  heart  and  life. 
The  real  secret  in  soul-winning  is  not  to  win  souls 


THE  IMMEDIATE  PRACTICAL  AIM       61 

to  ourselves,  nor  to  the  acceptance  of  our  dogmatic 
views,  but  into  the  practice  of  following  their  own 
light,  and  so  to  an  interior  experience  of  truth  and 
God. 

It  is  not  ours  to  win  people  to  the  abandonment  of 
their  own  theological  traditions,  and  to  the  accept- 
ance of  our  own  dogmatic  systems  instead.  People 
usually  suppose  us  to  be  doing  this  :  this  we  need  to 
disappoint  as  Jesus  disappointed  the  woman  at  the 
well  of  Sychar.  There  is  indeed  a  time  for  the  im- 
parting of  theological  instruction,  even  to  the  com- 
munication of  some  system  of  truth ;  but  that  time 
is  not  yet  in  the  more  primary  process  of  soul- 
winning.  The  utmost  we  now  need  to  do,  the  utmost 
we  can  do,  in  method,  is  to  put  a  soul  upon  the  clue 
to  its  own  realization  of  Christ.  If  we  do  this,  we  do 
much,  because  we  help  at  least  to  strengthen,  we  may 
even  initiate  the  habit  of  walking  in  the  light,  and 
this  is  to  induct  one  into  an  act  of  faith  ,•  for  in  the 
last  analysis  an  act  of  faith  is  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  the  committal  of  the  soul  by  an  executive  act,  a 
collective  act  of  the  entire  soul,  to  walk  in  the  pres- 
ent measure  of  spiritual  light  possessed. 

In  that  remarkable  story  given  in  the  ninth  of 
John,  of  the  opening  of  the  eyes  of  the  man  born 
blind,  we  have  simply  the  account  of  how  a  man  was 
led  into  faith,  although  everything  is  set  before  us 
under  the  forms  of  a  man  walking  in  the  light,  albeit 


62  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WIl^rNraG 

starting  from  utter  night,  and  walking  more  and 
more  bravely  and  loyally  as  the  light  increased  until 
at  length  he  became  an  open-eyed  and  luminous 
prophet  testifying  to  Christ  in  the  most  exalted  and 
confident  terms. 

The  highest  work  we  ever  do  for  another  soul  is  to 
afford  incentive  to  treat  the  truth  it  already  knows  as 
a  reality,  and  so  to  act  upon  it,  risk  something  on  it. 
This  is  the  development  of  faith  in  another.  It  is 
putting  the  soul  on  the  clue  to  personal  and  imme- 
diate realization  of  God.  Thus  and  thus  only  can 
Christian  experience  so-called  be  begun  or  continued. 
As  ministers  of  Christ,  whether  professionally  so  or 
not,  this  is  our  distinctive  mission  in  the  world  ;  and 
happy  is  he  or  she  who  has  developed  tact  and  skill 
in  so  profound  a  matter.  When  this  shall  become 
general  in  the  church,  as  we  see  it  occasionally  mani- 
fested in  individual  instances,  the  world-wide  uni- 
versal revival  will  have  come. 

And  be  it  noticed,  the  spirit  of  such  an  evangelism 
is  by  no  means  exhausted  when  a  specific  result  lead- 
ing an  unregenerate  soul  to  its  first  experience  of 
Christ  is  gained,  because  the  whole  spiritual  life 
under  the  gospel  in  its  method  and  ongoing  is 
germinally  contained  in  the  taking  of  one  such  step. 
Each  successive  step  in  the  divine  life  in  whatever 
relations,  is  to  be  taken  on  the  same  principle  of 
loyalty  to  light,  as  that  on  which  the  first  step  was 


THE  IMMEDIATE  PEAOTICAL  AIM       63 

taken.  It  is  from  the  failure  to  inculcate  this  in 
developing  the  newly  begun  life  that  after  results  in 
the  lives  of  really  converted  people  are  so  unsatis- 
factory. Young  converts  are  not  properly  instructed 
and  aided  to  the  expression  of  this  important  principle 
in  the  unfolding  habits  of  their  entire  career.  For 
lack  of  this  great  numbers  who  come  into  the  church 
truly  converted,  become  either  legalistic  in  their 
thought,  or  shortly  grow  confused,  and  lose  their 
evangelical  bearings.  So  then  nothing  short  of  a 
^^reconversion,"  so-called,  will  set  them  right  again. 
The  whole  habit  of  the  new  life  needs  to  be  rendered 
evangelical,  to  be  continued  on  the  basis  of  the 
evangelical  status,  under  which  as  converts  their  new 
life  began. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  evangelism  so  pro- 
foundly and  widely  needed  in  our  day  and  a  far 
better  type  than  is  common,  is  itself  necessary  in 
order  to  train  and  accustom  the  church  to  live  truly 
under  the  evangelical  status  in  which  the  gospel 
would  place  and  establish  them,  as  well  as  to  bring 
in  new  converts.  Thus  viewed  the  evangelization 
required  is  a  vastly  deeper  and  more  universal  thing 
than  is  commonly  supposed. 


IV 

THE  NATUEE  OP  SAYING  FAITH 

But  he  that  doeth  the  truth  cometh  to  the  light  that  his  works 
may  be  made  manifest  that  they  have  been  wrought  in  God. — 
John  3 :  21. 

Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  for  practical 
dealing  with  men,  the  soul-winner  needs  to  have  a 
clear  conception  of  what  constitutes  saving  faith. 
Doubtless  in  the  general  mind  there  is  a  supposition 
that  faith  is  primarily  the  belief  of  a  theological 
proposition ;  a  particular  intellectual  concept  respect- 
ing Christ  and  certain  aspects  of  His  work.  The  fact 
that  the  Scriptures  place  such  emphasis  on  the  matter 
of  believing  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  further 
fact  that  in  the  apostolic  writings  there  is  a  sharp 
antithesis  drawn  between  what  are  called  ' '  works  of 
law,"  considered  as  meritorious,  and  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ  as  the  Eedeemer  of  men  and  the  fulfiUer  of  the 
law,  partly  explains  this.  But  there  is  in  the  New 
Testament  at  least  a  third  principle  with  a  character- 
istic phrasing,  which  certainly  is  not  the  equivalent 
of  doing  the  deeds  of  the  law,  nor  is  it  discovered,  in 
common  thought,  we  fear,  to  be  what  it  really  is  ;  the 
synonym  of  real  faith  in  God. 

The  principle  we  refer  to  is  expressed  by  Jesus  on 
64 


THE  NATUEE  OF  SAVING  FAITH        65 

this  wise:  ^'He  that  doetli  the  truthj  cometh  to  the 
light,  that  his  works  may  be  made  manifest  that  they 
have  been  wrought  in  God.^^  ^  Note  the  three  ac- 
tivities expressed  in  this  text ;  doing  the  truth  ;  increase 
of  light  and  a  divine  operation  in  the  soul.  The  text 
implies  that  the  right  relation  to  Christ,  such  as  is 
embraced  by  a  personal  faith  in  Him — a  faith  which 
commits  itself  to  Him  and  makes  a  personal  test  of 
His  reality  and  faithfulness — involves  action  upon 
some  present  measure  of  truth  possessed : — enough 
truth  to  act  on.  As  it  does  so,  it  comes  to  fuller 
illumination  because  the  Spirit  is  cooperating  until 
at  length  a  divine  operation,  although  quite  below 
one's  consciousness,  is  wrought  in  the  soul.  This  is 
the  miracle  of  faith  in  action,  plus  the  correlative 
work  of  the  Divine  Spirit  in  the  soul. 

The  entire  Epistle  of  James,  often  in  the  past,  even 
by  Martin  Luther,  supposed  to  be  a  contradiction  of 
the  Pauline  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith,  is  really 
a  confirmation  of  Paul's  doctrine  and  only  another 
way  of  stating  it.  The  works  which  James  com- 
mends, for  example,  the  act  of  Abraham  in  yielding 
up  Isaac,  are  really  worlcs  of  faith,  and  not  works  of 
law,  at  all,  and  the  work  of  faith  is  simply  faith  in 
action,  faith  proving  itself  real.'  Even  Paul  himself, 
in  the  Epistle  to  the  Eomans,  emphasizes  the  im- 
portance of  ^^  obeying  the  truth,"  and  points  out  the 

>  John  3  :  21.  ^  James  2  :  21-24. 


66  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

fearful  evil  of  ^'  obeying  unrighteousness,"  ^  of  "  hold- 
ing down  the  truth  in  unrighteousness.''  ^  Indeed,  at 
one  point  Paul  seems  to  afford  promise  even  of 
eternal  life,  ''to  them  that  by  patience  in  well-doing, 
seek  for  glory  and  honour  and  incorruption  "  ;'  but 
if  so,  it  is  altogether  on  the  principle  of  faith  on  the 
ground  of  Christ's  atoning  work  of  which  they  may 
as  yet  be  in  ignorance,  while  yet  cherishing  certain 
spiritual  ideals.  Paul  certainly  says  that ''  glory  and 
honour  and  peace  are  to  every  man  that  worketh 
good  ;  to  the  Jew  first  and  also  to  the  Greek."  *  We 
should  however  miss  the  whole  spirit  of  Paul's  teach- 
ing if  we  failed  to  see  that  all  these  terms  are  in- 
tended by  him,  to  be  mere  expressions  of  faith  ;  that 
is,  of  a  collective,  executive  act  of  the  entire  soul  in 
the  direction  of  the  ideals  which  it  cherishes  and  on 
the  basis  of  the  measure  of  light  enjoyed,  whether  it 
be  in  the  case  of  the  Jew  or  the  Greek. 

Doubtless  the  failure  to  recognize  this  third  form 
of  Scripture  teaching  which  we  are  now  emphasizing, 
has  led  to  deplorable  misunderstandings  between 
evangelicals  and  non-evangelicals,  as  it  has  also  ren- 
dered narrow  the  interpretations  of  some  evangelicals 
in  considering  the  moral  and  spiritual  status  before 
God  of  many  whose  theological  views  are  erroneous, 
or  of  those  who  have  never  known  the  historic  Christ. 

*  Rom.  2:8.  «  Ibid.  1 :  18. 

8  i6i(?.  2  :  6,  7.  ^  Ibid.  2: 10, 


THE  NATUEE  OF  SAVING  FAITH        67 

And  so  some  workers  in  foreign  missions  have  put 
much  further  away  from  them  than  they  need  to  the 
so-called  ^'heathen.''  The  missionary  erroneously 
supposes  that  before  a  soul  reared  in  Paganism  can 
even  be  started  in  the  way  of  salvation,  he  must 
necessarily  first  be  indoctrinated  into  a  body  of 
theological  truth,  and  this  matter  seems  so  difficult 
in  the  face  of  ignorance,  prejudice  and  superstition, 
that  some  workers  are  discouraged  from  the  start, 
and  accomplish  little  or  nothing  of  value.  Some 
justify  their  failure  by  thinking  they  are  ^' seed- 
sowing,"  which  may  be  true  enough  ;  but  it  is  much 
more  likely  they  are  pursuing  a  mistaken  pedagogic 
method. 

Now  in  our  effort  to  reach  the  heathen,  we  do  well 
to  ponder,  for  their  pedagogic  values,  any  and  every 
aspect  of  religion  however  false  or  imperfect.  Every 
form  of  religion,  even  the  crudest  fetishism,  gives 
utterance  to  some  deep  hunger  of  the  soul,  and  so 
hints  a  thought  of  God. 

For  example,  animism, — spirit- worship — even  at 
its  lowest,  holds  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  human 
spirit,  in  the  antagonism  of  spirits  good  and  bad,  in 
the  possibility  of  some  sort  of  communion  of  spirits, 
and  in  the  future  life  of  spirits.  The  savage  idolater 
often  does  not  really  worship  the  symbol  before 
which  he  bows ;  he  simply  tries  thus  to  realize  and 
localize  the  spirit  which  he  fears.    The  rude  African 


68  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

who  would  not  complete  a  bargain  with  the  European 
trader  until  he  had  time  to  go  and  bring  his  fetish 
which  he  had  forgotten,  is  far  nearer  to  God  than 
the  modern,  nominal  Christian  who  essays  to  con- 
duct his  business  aj)art  from  his  religion ;  nay,  the 
African  in  loyalty  to  his  crude  conscience  reads  a 
needed  lesson  to  all  such  as  have  forgotten  that  God 
has  the  most  intimate  relation  to  all  business,  even 
to  corporate  acts.  Brahminism  with  all  its  grossness 
is  at  bottom  a  non-materialistic  religion.  It  seeks  to 
fit  the  spiiit  by  endless  transmigrations  for  a  future 
life.  Buddhism  represents  a  half-truth,  viz.  :  that 
the  soul  to  find  its  true  blessedness  must  lose  itself. 
Its  fundamental  defect  is  that  unlike  Christianity,  it 
does  not  show  how  through  losing  its  lower  life,  the 
soul  may  find  itself  in  the  higher  life,  a  life  which 
Christ  makes  possible.  The  remnant  of  truth  found 
in  any  of  these  religions  should  be  used  to  put  men 
on  the  clue  to  the  realization  of  Christ,  and  of  all 
that  follows. 

The  essential  principle  at  the  root  of  all  saving 
faith  is  loyalty  to  present  spiritual  light,  a  loyalty 
that  is  ready  to  act  on  its  light.  This  being  so,  any 
soul  may  make  an  instant  beginning  anywhere,  and 
with  whatever  measure  of  truth  it  has,  in  the  school 
of  Christ.  I  freely  grant  that  this  idea  has  not  al- 
ways prevailed,  and  is  even  now  far  from  general 
acceptance    among    evangelicals.     Many    sincerely 


THE  NATUEE  OF  SAVING  FAITH        69 

suppose  that  in  order  to  salvation  in  any  degree,  there 
must  first  exist  in  the  mind  a  certain  concept,  or  set 
of  concepts,  which  in  themselves  must  be  dogmat- 
ically believed,  before  the  soul  can  come  into  vital 
relation  to  Christ.  This  assumes  that  faith  is 
primarily  and  essentially  an  intellectual  belief  5 
belief  in  a  doctrine  about  God,  or  Christ,  or  the 
Bible.  But  this  is  not  the  truth  concerning  Chris- 
tian faith,  and  never  was.  There  is  a  place  for 
intellectual  beliefs,  but  this  in  the  matter  of  method 
is  at  a  later  stage.  Of  course  we  do  not  forget  that 
a  certain  modicum  of  objective  truth  must  precede 
any  subjective  action  of  the  soul.  But  some  amount 
of  such  truth  is  always  present  to  every  mind. 

Saving  faith  at  its  heart  is  a  moral  attitude  of 
personality  ;  ^  as  such,  therefore,  any  soul,  anywhere, 
whatever  its  degree  of  illumination,  is  capable  of 
exercising  such  faith  in  principle,  the  moment  it  is 
appealed  to.  Christianity,  alone,  of  all  religions, 
takes  note  of  so  elemental  a  thing  as  this.  Christ 
in  His  school  requires  of  no  soul  more  than  one 
step  at  a  time,  and  that  step  a  relative  one,  in  view 
of  all  the  conditions  it  faces.  That  step  however 
may  hold  in  itself  the  potentiality  of  all  possible 
Christian  living.  Doubtless  at  this  point  many 
Christians  have  sadly  misunderstood  their  own 
religion,  and  so  they  still  place  the  cart  before 
1  Rom.  2  :  15,  16. 


70  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

the  horse,  in  their  initiative  appeals  to  men.  This 
really  embarrasses  Christianity  and  makes  it  need- 
lessly slow  of  acceptance. 

It  is  always  a  tactical  mistake  also  to  put  religion  as 
a  philosophy  over  against  any  other  form  of  religion 
as  a  philosophy,  in  a  competitive  way.  Those  who 
proceed  as  if  Christianity  were  a  competitive  religion, 
always  do  so  to  the  damage  of  Christianity ;  they  mis- 
represent its  spirit  and  distort  its  method.  Christian- 
ity is  not  in  the  field  to  gain  a  partisan  victory.  Such 
victories  as  Christianity  wins,  it  wins  from  intrinsic 
desert,  because  it  complements  the  limited,  or 
vitalizes  the  expiring  hope  in  other  systems.  Chris- 
tianity never  seeks  victory  for  its  own  selfish  sake, 
but  because  of  its  genuine  and  exhaustless  love  for 
those  whom  it  would  win  from  error  and  short- 
sightedness ;  it  came  ^'  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfill.'^ 
It  comes  as  sunrise  comes,  not  to  obliterate  the  star- 
light, but  to  suffuse  it  with  a  more  original  glow. 

The  following  account  of  a  method  employed  in 
dealing  with  a  Eoman  Catholic  will  illustrate  the 
principle. 

Last  summer  I  was  observing  the  work  of  some 
labourers  who  were  laying  water  pipes  at  Northfield, 
Mass.  For  several  days  I  had  noticed  among  the 
force  a  broad  shouldered,  big  brained  Irishman  who 
was  the  principal  man  on  the  job,  named  Jim,  a  Eo- 
man Catholic.    I  came  upon  him  one  day  at  work 


THE  NATTJEE  OF  SAYING  FAITH        71 

down  in  a  trench  six  feet  below  the  surface,  lying  flat 
on  his  stomach,  tamping  in  the  jute  around  the  joints 
of  a  water  main.  He  did  not  observe  me  as  I  sat 
down  on  the  bank  to  watch  him  at  his  work.  Shortly 
Jim  called  to  an  Italian  attendant  to  bring  him  lead. 
The  Italian  promptly  responded,  bringing  a  ladle  full 
of  the  molten  metal  but  slopping  it  rather  carelessly 
as  he  approached. 

I  cried  out,  ^'  Careful,  man,  you'U  burn  the  fellow 
down  there." 

Jim  looked  up  surprised  and  taking  in  who  I  was, 
although  we  had  barely  learned  each  other's  names, 
he  said,  ^'Well,  doctor,  if  that  lead  is  hot,  what  d'ye 
think  about  the  hot  place  ?  " 

I  replied,  ^'  It's  a  good  place  to  keep  out  of." 

Jim  answered,  '^But  d'ye  think  there  is  such  a 
place,  anyway?" 

I  answered,  ^' There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  hot  con- 
science, and  that's  the  worst  sort  of  a  hell. 


?? 


^'Well,"  said  Jim,  ^'I  observe  that  the  clergy 
differ  about  these  things.  And  then,"  he  added 
throwing  up  his  hands  despairingly,  "what's  a  man 
to  do  in  my  circumstances  about  religion,  anyhow  •? 
Look  at  me  amongst  these  Italians,  and  I  only  a  poor 
plumber." 

Observing  that  the  man  had  appreciated  my  almost 
unconscious  sympathy  with  him,  and  that  he  was 
reaching  out  after  more,  I  warmed  to  him  and  said  : 


72  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WmNmG 

^^My  dear  fellow,  your  work  down  there  in  that 
trench  is  just  as  acceptable  to  God,  if  you  do  it  in  the 
right  spirit,  as  mine  is  preaching  in  the  pulpit." 

He  looked  up  surprised,  and  continued  :  "Do you 
believe  that  r^ 

"  Believe  it?  I  know  it !  It's  the  one  truth  I'm 
trying  to  get  everybody  to  believe." 

"Well,"  replied  Jim,  "  I  think  I  must  come  up  and 
have  a  talk  with  you." 

I  answered,  "All  right,  Jim,  I'm  looking  for  the 
man  that's  looking  for  me.     When  will  you  come?  " 

He  looked  up  with  a  quizzical  twinkle  in  his  eye  : 
"I'll  come — next  Sunday  afternoon — at  four  o'clock 
— if  it  doesn't  rain." 

"Well,"  I  said,  "  come  on,  I'll  be  looking  for  you. 
If  it  rains  I'll  see  you  in  the  house." 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "I  don't  want  to  come  into  your 
house ',  1  want  to  see  you  alone." 

"  AU  right,"  said  I,  "I'll  be  out  under  the  trees ; " 
and  I  earnestly  hoped  it  would  not  rain. 

Four  o'clock  Sunday  afternoon  came,  and  true  to 
his  word  Jim  came  sauntering  up  the  walk,  with  what 
deep  thoughts  the  sequel  will  teU.  I  was  waiting  to 
receive  him,  and  we  sat  down  under  the  trees  together. 

He  opened  by  saying  :  "I've  been  working  here 
in  ITorthfield  for  six  weeks.  I'd  like  to  live  here  al- 
ways. I  wish  I  could  get  a  job  to  keep  me  the  year 
round." 


THE  NATUKE  OF  SAVING  FAITH        73 

I  answered,  ^^  Why,  where  do  you  live"? " 

He  repUed,  ^'  I  live  in  hell — in  S ." 

"  How  so  ?  ^'  I  answered. 

^^Well,"  said  he,  ^'you  see  I  married  unfortu- 
nately ;  my  wife  is  a  terror.  She  has  fits  of  unaccount- 
able madness;  she  wiU  sometimes  rouse  me  in  the 
night  and  threaten  to  strangle  me,  and  with  no 
reason;  the  froth  will  stand  out  on  her  lips;  she's 
like  one  possessed  of  the  devil.  She  won't  eat  any- 
thing I  buy  ;  she  thinks  I  mean  to  poison  her.  And 
yet  for  more  than  twenty  years  I  have  taken  home  all 
my  wages  week  by  week,  and  laid  them  down  on  the 
table,  and  said,  ^  Wife,  there  it  is,  spend  it  as  you 
like^ ;  and  she  has  done  it ;  I've  not  even  bought  a 
shirt  .lO*-  myself;  and  yet  I'm  only  tormented  by  her. 
Some  of  my  friends,  one  a  judge,  have  said  to  me, 
*  Get  quit  of  her,  get  a  divorce,'  but  I've  always  said, 
^I  won^t  do  it,  she's  my  wife  ;  '^what  God  has  joined 
together,  let  not  man  put  asunder."  ^  I  won't  leave 
her.     I'll  bear  it." 

His  great  chin  quivered  and  the  tears  were  on  his 
lashes. 

I  said,  ^'You  bear  that  for  principle's  sake,  do 
youl" 

He  said,  ^' Yes,  that's  my  cross." 

I  replied,  ^^The  Lord  bless  you,  my  dear  fellow, 
that  is  Christianity, — bearing  the  painfal  thing  for 
Christ's  sake,  for  duty's  sake." 


74  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINOTNG 

I  then  added,  ^'  You  must  have  prayed  a  good  deal 
about  this,  not  merely  said  prayers," 

^' Prayed,'^  said  he,  ^'of  course  I  have.  I  could 
never  have  borne  it  but  for  that." 

I  added,  "  God  appreciates  all  that." 

^'And  then,"  said  he:  ^'doctor,  what  do  you 
think  of  purgatory  ?  " 

I  said,  ^^  Jim,  if  you  want  to  know  what  I  think, 
there  is  no  purgatory  in  the  Bible,  it's  salvation  Jesus 
brings.   Do  you  know  what  the  name  '  Jesus '  means  ? ' ' 

^'  No,"  he  asked,  ^^  is  that  a  Greek  word ?  " 

'^  Yes,"  I  said,  ''that's  Greek.  The  Hebrew  word 
is  'Joshua'  or  'Jehoshua' ;  it  means  'deliverer,'  from 
purgatory  and  all.  The  angel  in  the  Bible  said,  '  Thou 
Shalt  call  His  name  Jesus  for  He  shall  save  His  people 
from  their  sins. '  ^  When  Jesus  undertakes  to  save  a 
man  He  makes  a  clean  job  of  it ;  He  makes  thorough 
work;  He  does  not  leave  us  in  any  purgatory." 

Jim  replied,  "  I  half  believe  it.  Then,"  he  added, 
"tell  me,  doctor,  why  the  priests  [say  we  are  not  to 
read  the  Bible." 

I  replied,  "  Jim,  have  you  got  a  Bible  T^ 

"Yes,"  said  he,  "a  big,  fine  one ;  but  I  don't  read 
it  much  ;  the  priests  tell  me  I  mustn't." 

"Well,"  I  added,  "I'm  not  going  to  quarrel  with 
your  priests,  I'm  your  priest  just  now,  and  I  tell  you, 
read  your  Bible. '^ 

»Matt.  1:81, 


THE  NATUEE  OF  SAVING  FAITH        75 

'^But,''  said  he,  ^'I  wouldn't  understand  it." 

"No,''  I  said,  "not  all  of  it.  Neither  do  your 
priests  5  no  more  do  1 5  but  I  understand  the  simple 
things  in  it,  and  so  may  you.  You  understand  your 
morning  paper.  Bead  your  Bible  in  plain  English, 
and  follow  that.'' 

Said  Jim,  "I  believe  I  will." 

Finally  I  asked,  ^  ^  How  long  have  you  had  so  serious 
views  of  these  religious  matters  ?  " 

" Oh,"  said  he,  "more  or  less  always." 

"More  or  less,"  I  said;  "there  has  been  some 
crisis  in  your  life  when  apart  from  priests  and  cere- 
monies of  every  kind,  you  turned  to  God  in  some 
earnest  way  for  yourself,  with  no  priest  but  Christ. 
Tell  me  now  honestly." 

"  Well,"  said  he,  "if  you  must  know,  it  was  when 
I  was  sick  in  Chicago,  in  a  hospital,  and  thought  I 
would  die." 

"Then  you  gave  up  your  heart  and  all  to  Christ, 
and  He  received  you." 

"That's  it,"  he  said. 

And  so,  observe  I  had  found  one  of  Christ's  sheep, 
not  of  our  ecclesiastical  fold  at  all,  but  really  a  sin- 
cere follower  of  the  true  Shepherd  starving  for  sym- 
pathy, for  some  one  to  confide  in,  whom  he  could 
trust.  He  had  come  to  a  real  confessional,  of  which 
the  formal  thing  is  often  a  farce  and  a  travesty.  In 
my  conviction,  all  the  priests  in  the  world  could  not 


76  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

have  broken  the  bond  formed  between  him  and  me 
that  day  in  our  fellowshii3  beneath  those  trees.  After 
prayer  which  we  had  together,  as  Jim  rose  to  go,  he 
inquired,  ^' When  shall  I  see  you  again,  I  would  like 
to  talk  some  more.^' 

"  WeU,'^  I  said,  ^'  I  go  to-morrow.  You  must  read 
your  Bible  for  yourself,  and  talk  to  Christ.'^ 

I  have  never  seen  him  since,  but  I  am  sure  a  soul 
was  put  on  the  clue  to  a  larger  and  deeper  realization 
of  divine  things,  than  it  had  previously  known.  We 
had  got  clean  off  partisan,  sectarian  ground.  As  I  have 
thought  the  thing  over  again  and  again  since,  I  can- 
not resist  the  persuasion  that  that  which  made  all 
those  confidences  possible  was  the  simple  evidence 
of  sympathy  Jim  found  that  day  when  a  stranger  con- 
cerned himself  lest  he  should  suffer  injury  as  he  lay  in 
the  trench,  and  helped  him  to  believe  that  his  hard 
and  unrecognized  toil  was  after  all  appreciated  by 
Christ.  I  long  since  found  it  was  a  tactical  mistake 
to  antagonize  men  on  the  side  of  their  religious  pre- 
possessions. 

It  is  not  the  first  business  of  the  Christian  teacher 
to  furnish  men  with  a  creedal  religion  ready-made, — 
but  rather  to  put  and  keep  men  on  the  clue,  as  we 
have  called  it,  wherein  under  the  tuition  of  the  Spirit 
they  themselves  will  discover  the  truth  they  need.  * 

'  Several  paragraphs  in  this  chapter  are  quoted  substantially 
from  a  paper  given  by  the  author  before  the  Congress  of  Arts  and 


THE  NATUEE  OF  SAVING  FAITH        77 

The  wise  teacher  will  point  out  the  next  step,  and 
then  the  successive  steps  towards  the  experimental 
knowledge  of  Christ  Himself,  leaving  the  philosophy 
about  Christ  to  come  in  later.  There  is  a  place  for 
this  philosophy,  for  theology,  but  this  place  is  sec- 
ondary. Christ  is  always  within  personal  touch  of 
every  soul,  because  God's  love  is  so  all-embracing, 
even  though  the  soul  does  not  realize  it.  By  pressing 
our  theological  opinions  inopportunely,  we  may  create 
or  widen  a  breach  between  the  soul  and  Christ  when 
we  should  abolish  it.  The  real  touch  with  Christ  is 
realized  through  the  adoption  of  the  right  personal 
attitude  to  the  ideal  one  really  has.  The  Bible  calls 
this  ideal  "The  Word,"  or  that  "light  which  light- 
eth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world,"  *  "the 
essential  Christ,"  the  omnipresent  Eedeemer. 

To  assume  a  willing  attitude  to  one's  ideal  is  faith, 
a  faith  always  morally,  rather  than  intellectually, 
conditioned.  Our  will  has  no  power  of  itself  to  realize 
the  essential  Christ  to  the  soul.  The  will,  however, 
can  annul  the  practical  living  lie  which  controls  the 
life  in  its  self-will,  and  the  moment  this  is  done,  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  rushes  unsolicited  to  the  soul's  con- 
fessed helplessness  and  effects  faith  in  Him.     As  na- 

Sciences  at  the  Louisiana  Purchase  Exposition  in  St.  Louis,  on 
Comparative  Keligion,  and  published  in  the  report  of  that  Con- 

'ess. 

^  John  1 ;  9. 


78  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

ture  abhors  a  vacuum,  so  the  moment  in  the  light  one 
has,  the  self-will  endeavours  to  vacate  the  heart's 
throne  that  moment  the  Spirit  of  Christ  with  infinite 
pressure  rushes  in  to  fill  the  vacuum.  God's  interest 
in  conferring  grace  is  infinitely  greater  than  man's  in 
seeking  it. 

Says  Dr.  Cremer :  "The  wondrous  counter-efiect 
of  God  against  man's  sin  is  indeed  a  supernatural 
thing, — the  absolutely  inconceivable  to  human  philos- 
ophy ;  it  is  different  from  anything  which  elsewhere 
or  otherwise  ever  takes  place,  or  can  take  place." 
This  is  the  interior,  profound  reality  in  the  Christian 
religion. 

Now,  assuming  that  this  initiative  of  Christian 
experience  which  we  have  called  the  entrance  on  the 
clue  to  the  experimental  realization  of  the  Christ, 
has  taken  place,  Christianity  depends  for  its  deeper 
intellectual  apprehension  of  what  has  occurred,  upon 
the  after-effect  of  such  an  experience,  as  the  mind, 
like  a  waking  dreamer,  is  prepared  to  cast  its  eye 
backward,  and  reviews  in  the  light  of  the  Bible  the 
track  over  which  the  soul  has  come.  At  this  point, 
the  Holy  Scriptures  enter  with  measureless  value,  to 
bring  out  into  consciousness,  to  explain  to  the  under- 
standing, the  profound  realization  which  has  oc- 
curred, as  well  as  to  afford  a  basis  on  which  further 
subjective  experiences  may  be  wrought.  Here  is  the 
true,  the  indispensable  place  for  objective  truth. 


THE  NATUEE  OP  SAVING  FAITH        79 

Then  this  loyalty  to  light  which  Christianity  so 
values,  receives  from  its  divine  author  various  forms 
and  degrees  of  attestation.  This  attestation  will 
come  to  him  who  responds  to  the  light  of  nature, 
although  in  a  different  degree,  and  with  less  assur- 
ance, as  really  as  to  him  who  follows  the  light  of 
revelation,  because  the  God  of  nature  and  of  revela- 
tion are  one  and  the  same  being.  Christ  speaks  as 
really  in  the  voice  of  natural  conscience  as  in  His 
written  word/  because  the  conscience  with  all  other 
created  things  is  constructed  ^ through ^'  Christ,"^ 
according  to  Christ,  with  reference  to  Christ,  the 
true  norm  of  creation.  The  conscience  indeed,  as 
well  as  other  powers  of  the  natural  man,  is  fallen, 
and  needs  to  be  renewed  by  the  influence  of  the 
written  word.  The  voice  of  Christ,  however,  yet 
speaks  in  the  conscience,  however  obscurely  ;  and  to 
obey  that  conscience,  is  of  the  spirit  of  faith,  albeit 
it  needs  continual  enlightenment  from  the  Bible. 

It  is  the  embarrassment  of  current  Christianity  that 
by  so  many  it  is  still  supposed  that  the  realities  of 
Christian  faith  and  experience  in  themselves  are  co- 
terminous with  the  limited  diffusion  of  the  Scriptures 
— that  in  themselves  faith  and  experience  cannot 
exist  except  where  the  knowledge  of  the  Bible  exists. 
To  this  extent  Christianity  has  narrowly  and  mis- 
takenly alienated  from  itself  much  territory  which 

» Rom.  2 :  14-16.  » John  1 :  3. 


80  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

really  belongs  to  it — a  domain  which  is  its  birth- 
right. Christian  revelation  brings  to  light  what  is,^ 
in  the  spiritual  realm  5  for  example,  life  and  im- 
mortality, the  love  of  God  in  Christ,  the  suspended 
judgment  for  sin,  etc.,  etc.,  but  the  existence  of  all 
these  was  before  revelation,  and  independent  of  their 
explanation  in  the  Bible.  It  is  of  the  realities,  and 
not  of  the  explanation  of  them,  we  now  speak.  ^'  In 
the  beginning  was  the  word,  and  the  word  was  with 
God,  and  the  word  was  God.'' " 

Says  Paul  in  his  letter  to  the  Eomans,  ''But  the 
righteousness  which  is  of  faith  saith  thus ;  say  not 
in  thy  heart,  who  shaU  ascend  into  heaven  (that  is, 
to  bring  Christ  down)  or  who  shall  descend  into  the 
abyss  (that  is,  to  bring  Christ  up  from  the  dead)  but 
what  saith  it  1  The  word  is  nigJi  thee — (that  is,  the 
ideal  is  nigh  thee) — in  thy  mouth  and  in  thy  heart ;  that 
is  the  word  of  faith  which  we  preach.^ ^  ^  The  word, 
or  ideal,  of  faith  which  is,  is  such  a  thing  as  in  itself 
may  exist  unexplained — perhaps  fantastically  or 
ignorantly  held ; — the  word  of  faith  which  we  preach 
is  the  same  reality  receiving  a  rational  Biblical  ex- 
planation. Because  the  Holy  Spirit  has  gone  before 
him,  this  essential  faith  is  to  be  sought  for  by  the 
missionary,  in  however  slight  degree,  immediately, 
everywhere  and  in  all  men,  and  where  found,  always 

^Eph.  3:9.  2  John  1:1. 

3Kom.  10:6-8. 


THE  NATUEE  OF  SAYING  FAITH        81 

encouraged,  and  fed  with  revealed  truth.  This  is 
the  missionary's  true  place  of  beginning  with  the 
pagan  mind,  everywhere.  He  is  to  find  the  handle 
of  the  soul,  take  hold  of  it  and  direct  it  to  God. 
Such  is  the  practical,  already  existent  basis  which  as 
co-workers  with  God  we  have  everywhere  in  God's 
world. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  in  the  account  of  David 
Brainerd's  work  among  the  Delaware  Indians,  he 
speaks  of  a  remarkable  priest  or  reformer  who  had 
been  ^  '■  strangely  moved  to  devote  his  life  to  an  en- 
deavour to  restore  the  ancient  religion  of  the  Indians. '^ 
He  was  grotesquely  dressed  in  Indian  fashion,  but  he 
was  evidently  devout.  He  lamented  freely  the  degen- 
erate condition  of  the  Indians,  and  said  that  ^^  their 
ignorance  and  wickedness  had  so  troubled  him  some- 
times that  he  had  felt  driven  to  the  woods"  in  the 
solitariness  of  his  distress  for  them.  At  length,  he 
said,  ^'God  comforted  his  heart,"  and  showed  him 
that  he  should  not  so  withdraw  himself,  but  should 
return  to  his  associates  and  love  and  labour  for  them 
as  never  before.  While  Brainerd  was  discoursing 
with  him  at  times  he  would  say,  ^^l^ow  that  I  like, 
so  God  taught  me."  Brainerd  testifies  that  this  man 
was  sincere,  honest  and  conscientious,  according  to 
his  own  religious  opinions,  as  no  other  pagan  he  had 
seen.  He  laboured  earnestly  to  banish  the  drinking 
habit  from  the  Indians  j  but  by  his  followers  for  the 


82  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

most  part,  he  was  regarded  as  ^^a  precise  zealot,'^ 
and  his  efforts  were  unwelcome.  It  would  thus  ap- 
pear that  in  the  heart  of  this  nature-taught  savage, 
was  the  spirit  of  faith  existing  with  most  limited 
light.  It  needed  further  instruction  to  give  it  such 
form  and  power  as  would  enable  it  to  grasp  the  large 
concept  of  '' salvation '^ — assured  salvation  for  him- 
self and  others  ;'  but  the  germ  in  ^'the  righteousness 
of  faith '^  evidently  was  there,  before  the  missionary 
with  his  message" came.  The  man  was  not  ''living 
up  to  '^  his  light,  as  no  man  does  ;  but  he  was  ivalMng 
in  his  light ;  that  is,  he  may  have  been  in  the  spirit 
of  a  penitent  and  believer ;  he  probably  was.  It  was 
the  function  of  the  missionary  to  develop  that  germi- 
nal faith,  that  it  might  grow  to  intelligence  and 
power.  How  far  even  Brainerd  did  this  we  are  not 
told.  Doubtless  multitudes  of  instances,  among  so- 
caUed  heathen  peoples  similar  to  this  exist,  and  they 
are  coming  to  be  better  known  than  formerly.  This 
is  evidence  of  the  at-liomeness  of  Christianity,  among 
all  men,  everywhere.  Christianity  in  fact  is  a  relig- 
ion which  cannot  be  apprehended  by  the  intellect 
alone,  but  requires  for  its  realization  the  right  use  of 
other  faculties  of  the  soul  as  well,  such  as  the  con- 

'  Rom.  10:10.  Note  the  distinction  implied  between  "unto 
righteousness,"  and  "unto  salvation  "  ;  the  latter  term  seems  to 
have  the  force  of  assured,  conscious  salvation,  in  order  to  which 
the  preached  word  is  necessary.  , 


THE  NATURE  OF  SAVING  FAITH        83 

science,  the  feelings,  the  imagination— and  above  all, 
the  will.  And  all  these  acts  pagans  can  exercise, 
with  the  very  dimmest  intellectual  light.  There  is 
need  that  the  entire  composite  soul  be  open.  Even 
the  living  God  cannot  authenticate  Himself  as  He 
desires  to  the  mere  fragment  of  personality,  albeit 
that  fragment  were  the  majestic  reason.  In  the  mere 
action  of  the  understanding,  the  executive  soul  puts 
itself  outside  the  truth,  and  simply  speculates  upon  it. 
One  needs  to  move  by  an  act  of  will  inside  the  truth 
with  all  the  love  of  the  heart,  and  with  all  the  moral 
sense  of  the  conscience.  He  who  does  this  touches 
reality.  The  agnosticism  of  the  world  is  only  the 
outcome  of  a  mistaken  intellectual  self-sufaciency,  a 
species  of  intellect  worship. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  George  J.  Eomanes,  long  a 
devoted  disciple  of  Charles  Darwin,  when  he  returned 
to  Christian  faith  after  a  long  period  of  agnostic  doubt, 
reproached  himself  for  what  he  called  "sins  of  the 
intellect,  mental  errors  and  undue  regard  for  intel- 
lectual supremacy.''  Eomanes  thus  clearly  saw  the 
principle  which  we  have  above  enunciated,  that  faith 
in  the  Christian  sense  is  essentially  a  right  attitude 
of  personality  to  the  light  one  has,  whatever  its 
degree.  It  could  not  be  otherwise  than  that  one  who 
previously  closed  so  many  avenues  of  the  soul  in  the 
interests  of  intellectual  supremacy  should  have,  for  a 
time,  blindly  missed  the  way  to  God.     It  is  precisely 


84  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WmNING 

such  blindness  of  heart  that  our  Lord  had  in  mind 
when  He  said:  "I  thank  Thee,  Father,  Lord  of 
heaven  and  earth,  because  Thou  hast  hid  these  things 
from  the  wise  and  prudent,  and  hast  revealed  them 
unto  babes. '^  ^  The  essential  difference  in  habit  of 
mind  between  a  child  and  a  mere  creature  of  intel- 
lectual prudence  is  this,  that  the  child  allows  its 
whole  composite  being  to  act  and  the  philosopher 
does  not. 

Now  Christianity  risks  everything  as  to  its  accept- 
ance or  rejection,  with  him  who  will  put  its  proposals 
to  the  experimental  test.  Said  Jesus  to  Thomas : 
*'  Eeach  hither  thy  finger  and  behold  My  hands,  and 
reach  hither  thy  hand  and  thrust  it  into  My  side,  and 
be  not  faithless,  but  believing. '^  "^  So  in  principle  He 
ever  says  :  ^^  Try  Me  and  see  if  I  am  not  what  I  claim 
to  be." 

The  method  of  Christianity  corresponds  to  the  lab- 
oratory method  of  modern  science.  When  it  can 
have  its  way  it  puts  the  inquirer  into  the  laboratory 
and  it  says:  ''There  are  the  chemicals,  the  test 
tubes,  crucibles,  dynamos,  etc.  ;  now  by  personal 
executive  acts  enter  into  relations  with  the  Lord  of 
nature,  put  Him  to  the  test  with  these  implements, 
and  get  your  experienced  results.  When  one  passes 
through  such  a  scientific  school  he  becomes  an  ex- 
pert j  that  is  one  experienced  in  what  is  called  "in- 
1  Matt.  11:25.  'John  20: 27. 


THE  NATUEE  OF  SAVING  FAITH        85 

ductive  science/^  and  so  also  Christianity  through 
experience  reaches  assured  conclusions  which  shine 
in  a  peculiar  divine  light.  As  between  God  and  man 
there  are  two  correlative  movements  :  the  man  move- 
ment Godward  and  the  God  movement  manward. 
The  point  at  which  these  meet  and  coalesce  is  faith. 
It  is  here  that  salvation  is  wrought,  a  matter  quite 
above  the  realm  of  mere  ethics,  a  concept  peculiar  to 
the  Bible,  and  often  quite  missed  by  non-evangel- 
icals. The  distinctive  element  in  evangelicalism, 
viz. ,  the  effectual  working  of  the  divine  grace  upon 
the  penitent  but  believing  human  soul  is  left  out. 
Without  this  divine  operation,  there  is  nothing  left 
for  the  soul  but  its  helpless  human  fluttering  against 
the  bars  of  its  own  cage  ;  there  is  no  salvation  possi- 
ble worthy  of  the  name.  This  downcoming  of  the 
grace  of  God  always  hidden  from  view,  upon  the  soul 
following  the  proper  clue  at  some  moment  of  crisis, 
is  the  vital  thing.  The  soul  finds  a  Saviour  j  but 
what  is  far  greater,  the  Saviour  finds  a  soul ;  and  this 
latter  is  the  profounder  element  in  the  transaction, 
the  divine  part  in  it  j  that  which  makes  it  saving  and 
transforming.  The  sooner  the  soul  can  be  brought 
to  perceive  by  faith  this  outreach  of  the  divine  em- 
brace after  it,  the  better  ;  and  the  more  strongly  the 
soul-winner  can  realize  the  divine  aspect  of  the  new 
possibility  in  Christy  the  greater  will  be  his  power  to 
start  the  lost  homeward. 


TACT  IN  PEESOKAL  APPEOACH 

And  I  will  make  you  to  become  fishers  of  men. — 3Iark  1  :  17. 

A  MATTER  of  very  great  importance  in  dealing 
successfully  with  souls  is  to  know  how  to  find  the 
right  angle  of  approach,  so  as  really  to  commend  our 
message.  One  of  the  best  illustrations  I  have  known 
came  to  me  some  years  ago,  in  an  address  given  by 
Dr.  E.  A.  Hume,  one  of  the  most  skillful  of  mission- 
aries to  India. 

(In  one  of  the  departmental  meetings  at  the  great 
Students'  Conference  in  Detroit,  Dr.  Hume  was  dis- 
coursing on  method.  He  was  making  the  point  that 
if  we  would  secure  entrance  for  our  message  on  the 
part  of  the  religionists  of  Asia,  for  example,  the 
Hindus,  we  must  endeavour  to  put  in  place  of  their 
superstition,  a  solid  reason  for  any  change  we  urge 
upon  them,  and  we  should  always  be  sympa- 
thetic, and  never,  under  any  circumstances  antag- 
onize them.  )  Then  Dr.  Hume  proceeded  about  as 
follows : 

^'Sui)pose  I  am  in  India.  I  come  out  of  my 
bungalow  in  the  early  morning,  and  I  see  a  poor 

86 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH         87 

pariah  Hindu  with  whom,  perhaps,  I  have  had  a 
slight  acquaintance,  coming  along  the  road  leading  a 
goat,  with  a  red  band  about  its  horns.  I  know  per- 
fectly well  what  it  all  means,  but  I  approach  my 
Mend  and  say  pleasantly, 

^^ '  Good-morning,  my  Mend,  where  are  you  going 
with  the  goat  ? ' 

^^  '  Oh,  I  am  going  to  the  temple.' 

^^ '  Indeed.     May  I  go  with  you  % ' 

^^^What!'  says  the  simple-hearted  man.  ^Do 
you  wish  to  go  to  the  temple  ? ' 

*^  ^Certainly  I  do.' 

<<  ^  Very  weU,  then,  come  along.'  " 

The  missionary  further  queries  :  "  ^  And  what  are 
you  going  to  do  with  the  goat,  my  Mend,  when  you 
get  to  the  temple  % ' 

"  ^Oh,'  says  the  man,  somewhat  hesitant,  "  ^the 
goat  is  to  be  killed  ;  I  am  going  to  sacrifice  him.' 

"^Indeed,'  I  reply,  ^and  why,  Mr.  So-and-So, 
do  you  kiU  the  goat  % ' 

"  a  don't  know.' 

"  ^  You  don't  know  !  Surely  you  must  have  some 
reason  for  it.' 

"  ^I  don't  know  any  reason.' 

^^  ^But  you  must  have  some  reason.' 

^'  ^  No,  none  that  I  can  think  of.  It's  our  custom,' 
throwing  his  thumb  over  his  shoulder,  as  if  pointing 
to  the  past ;  'it's  our  custom ;  my  fathers  did  it.' 


88  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WIl^NmG 

^^  ^  But  you  must  have  some  reason  for  killing  the 
goat.' 

^'  ^  I  do  not  know  any.' 

*'  ^  Is  it  because  there  is  some  sense  of  wrong,  of  sin 
in  your  heart  and  life,  and  you  feel  that  something 
must  die  to  satisfy  it  ?  ' 

*^  ^  I  don't  know,  sir,  you  know ! ' 

"  ^  WeU,  then,  why  do  you  have  a  red  band  around 
the  horns  of  the  goat?  Why  not  a  white  band,  or  a 
black  one  ? ' 

^' Again  he  answers:  ^I  don't  know,  sir  j  it's  our 
custom  ;  our  fathers  did  it.' 

''  ^  It  must  be  for  some  reason.' 

^' '  I  cannot  think  of  any  ;  it's  our  custom.' 

"  ^Well,  then,  is  it  because  the  red  band  is  the 
same  colour  as  the  blood  of  the  goat  that  is  to  be 
slain  1 ' 

"  ^  I  don't  know.     You  Tcnoic  / '  " 

(Observe  how  the  man's  confidence  is  growing 
in  the  sympathy  and  wisdom  of  his  missionary 
questioner.) 

^^  'And  do  you  know,  Mr.  So-and-So,  where  this 
custom  of  sacrificing  beasts  originated  ? ' 

'^'Oh,  no,'  says  the  Hindu,  'I  don't  know; 
nobody  does.  It  has  existed  for  ages.  Nobody 
knows.' 

''' Excuse  me,'  I  reply;  'I  know  where  it 
originated,    and   this   is  why  I   have   come   from 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH         89 

America  to  live  in  India,  to  tell  you  and  your  peo- 
ple about  it/  ^' 

From  this  beginning  the  missionary,  in  the  simplest 
and  most  interesting  way  possible,  tells  the  varied 
story  of  the  early  sacrifices  recorded  in  the  Scriptures 
from  Abel  down  to  the  present  time,  and  then  going 
back  over  the  ground,  he  shows  him  the  insufficiency 
of  animal  sacrifice  of  every  sort,  explains  how  the 
poor  human  heart  has  ever  sought  to  express  itself 
thus,  because  it  has  a  deep  sense  of  distance  from  God, 
and  of  the  certain  penalty  that  must  follow  sin. 

And  then  taking  up  another  line,  the  missionary 
explains  how  God,  from  the  beginning,  has  ever 
looked  with  pity  and  compassion  on  the  unsatisfactory 
efforts  of  men  of  all  times  and  countries  to  make 
sacrifices  for  themselves ;  and  knowing  that  they 
never  would  succeed.  He  Himself,  from  the  begin- 
ning, from  before  the  creation  of  the  world,  so  loved 
the  world  as  to  suffer  infinite  pain  with  it  and  hence 
gave  His  only  begotten  Son  as  the  consummate  ex- 
pression of  that  suffering  with  and  for  it,  that  whoso- 
ever believeth  on  Him  might  have  everlasting  life. 
Thus,  for  the  first  time,  the  poor,  ignorant,  super- 
stitious Hindu  has  found  a  man,  a  stranger  from 
another  country,  who  has  helped  him  to  understand 
his  own  poor,  crude  system  of  religion  better  than  he 
himself  understands  it  5  and  the  man  begins,  through 
his  own  poor  religion,  to  find  his  way  to  ^Hhe  Lamb 


90  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

of  God,  whicli  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world.  ^^ ' 
Of  course  the  missionary  has  brought  his  acquaint- 
ance into  sympathy  with  himself,  and  gained  a  strong 
moral  grip  on  him. 

By  this  time  they  have  reached  the  temple,  and 
meeting  the  priest,  the  missionary  explains  to  him 
how  he  happened  to  come  to  the  temple,  and  goes 
over  a  similar  process  with  the  priest,  nor  does  he 
finish  until  he  has  taken  the  remnant  of  truth,  the 
scarlet  thread,  even  in  the  Hindu  religion  and  made 
it  a  channel  through  which  to  convey  to  the  priest 
also  the  same  rich  and  divine  gospel.  He  has  antag- 
onized neither  of  them;  he  has  come  into  close 
quarters  with  them ;  he  has  given  reasons  where  they 
had  nothing  but  blind  custom ;  and  from  the  shadow 
he  has  deduced  the  substance  of  the  final  and  univer- 
sal religion  for  all  men. 

Often  we  have  wondered,  as  we  have  recalled  that 
simple  but  telling  narrative  by  Dr.  Hume,^  if  mission- 
aries among  pagans  generally,  have  discovered  the 
true  angle  of  approach,  so  as  to  be  really  "fishers  of 
men."  This  spiritual  tact  is  the  supreme  human 
qualification  for  catching  men. 


1  John  1 :  29. 

'  Another  fine  instance  of  Dr.  Hume's  great  tactfulness  in 
dealing  with  the  Hindu  mind  is  given  in  the  last  chapter  of  his 
recent  book,  "Missions  from  the  Modern  View,"  published  by 

Toeveil. 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH        91 

The  personal  equation  as  between  man  and  man,  is 
always  a  differing  factor,  and  no  two  men  will  use 
precisely  the  same  method,  or  adopt  the  same  tactics. 
One's  inventiveness  in  the  circumstances  in  which  he 
finds  himself,  and  one's  knowledge  of  the  habits  of 
mind  of  the  people  among  whom  he  labours,  will  al- 
ways have  much  to  do  with  the  matter ;  and  of  course 
the  special  Spirit's  guidance  is  always  supremely 
needed.  (^  What  we  are  now  urging  however,  is,  that 
this  matter  of  personal  approach  should  be  carefully 
studied  and  cultivated.  At  the  basis  of  peculiar  skill 
in  this  line  of  things  is  the  spirit  of  a  divinely  begot- 
ten love ;  the  love  which  "  beareth  all  things,  believeth 
all  things,  hopeth  all  things,  endureth  all  things,'^* 
the  love  which  never  seeks  to  win  a  victory  in  argu- 
ment over  another,  for  the  victory's  sake  ;  but  rather 
tries  to  make  another's  difficulty  one's  own  and  to 
help  him  out  of  it ;  it  yearns  to  impart  all  that  is  best 
in  itself  to  one's  fellow.  ) 

In  my  first  pastorate  in  Illinois,  which  was  blessed 
with  many  striking  conversions,  the  following  oc- 
curred :  One  day,  while  I  was  sitting  in  a  barber's 
chair  in  a  shop  of  the  town,  a  man  of  uncouth  ap- 
pearance and  great  recklessness  entered  and  began  to 
talk  very  loud  upon  some  subject  that  had  irritated 
him,  punctuating  his  excited  remarks  with  shocking 
oaths.  One  of  the  barbers  tried  by  signs  to  silence 
*lCor.  13:7. 


92  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINNmG 

him,  indicating  that  a  minister  was  in  the  chair  to 
whom  profanity  was  offensive.  At  this  the  man  be- 
came even  more  profane  and  vociferous.  I  paid  no 
attention  to  it  except  to  note  the  features  of  the  man. 

A  week  or  two  afterwards  I  had  occasion  to  visit  a 
large  carpenter  shop  to  request  the  use  of  some  tools 
that  I  might  shave  out  a  new  handle  for  my  hatchet. 
I  was  made  welcome  to  a  bench  and  some  tools, 
pulled  off  my  co^i-t  and  went  to  work.  Not  long  after 
the  man  whom  I  had  seen  in  the  barber  shop,  who,  it 
seems,  had  a  bench  in  the  same  establishment,  came 
in.  He  observed  me  at  work,  and  I  recognized  him, 
but  for  a  moment  nothing  was  said.  Soon  after  I 
noticed  that  this  man  was  watching  my  movements. 
He  finally  gathered  courage  to  approach  and  re- 
marked ; 

^' Well,  it  seems  that  some  preachers  can  do  some- 
thin'  besides  preach.'' 

I  replied  pleasantly,  ^'Yes,  I  can  shave  out  a 
hatchet  handle.  I  was  brought  up  to  use  tools,"  and 
I  went  on  finishing  my  work.  After  a  time  the  man 
came  around  again  and  said  : 

^'  Well,  that  is  pretty  good  ;  it's  a  fine  job." 

I  replied,  "Well,  it  will  do." 

Having  finished  my  work,  I  turned  to  the  several 
workmen,  thanked  them  for  the  use  of  the  tools  and 
the  courtesies  of  the  shop,  and  added  : 

"Gentlemen,  my  shop's  open  on  Sundays  on  the 


TACT  m  PEESONAL  APPEOACH         93 

corner  of  Third  and  State  Streets.  Come  around  and 
use  my  bench  and  see  how  the  tools  work ;  you'll  all  be 
welcome." 

^' Well,"  responded  my  softening  townsman  of  the 
barber-shop  episode,  ^^  I  would  like  to  see  your  bench 
and  how  your  tools  work.     I  may  come." 

^TU  look  for  you,"  I  answered,  and  with  a  warm 
hand-shake,  I  departed. 

It  was  not  long  after,  that  one  Sunday  night,  this 
man  appeared  in  the  church  with  his  wife  and  two 
daughters,  and  was  seated  well  up  towards  the  front 
of  the  room.  I  proceeded  with  the  service  with  an 
uncommon  sense  of  actual  business  on  hand.  The 
meeting  drew  to  a  close.  Meanwhile  my  friend,  I  ob- 
served, was  not  a  little  interested  in  the  line  of  thought 
I  had  been  following.  After  the  benediction,  in  a 
moment  I  was  at  his  side,  expressing  pleasure  at  see- 
ing him  in  the  church  and  inquiring  if  this  was  his 
wife  beside  him  and  if  these  were  his  daughters,  and 
inviting  them  to  come  again  and  come  regularly  if 
they  had  no  other  j)lace  of  worship. 

He  thanked  me  and  then  returned  the  compliment 
by  saying  : 

"  Would  not  you  and  your  woman  call  on  us  some- 
time?" And  then,  improving  upon  that,  he  turned 
to  his  wife  and  said  : 

"  Wife,  why  can't  we  have  the  elder  and  his  woman 
to  tea  some  evening  ? ' ' 


94  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

"With  pleasure,"  she  replied,  and  with  a  feeling 
which  I  thought  I  understood. 

I  answered :  ''Name  the  evening,  and  we  will  be 
there.'' 

The  date  was  fixed  on  the  spot  and  a  few  evenings 
after  my  wife  and  I  found  ourselves  at  the  table,  in  a 
comfortable  home  that  evidently  had  been  put  in  un- 
usual order  for  our  reception,  and  the  table  was  laden 
with  dainties. 

We  chatted  away  pleasantly  through  the  meal,  and 
at  the  close  my  friend  turned  to  me  and  said  : 

"Now  the  supper  is  over,  and  I  suggest  that  your 
woman  and  mine  remain  here  to  visit,  while  you  and 
I  go  into  the  parlour  by  ourselves." 

We  went  in  and  sat  down,  and  then  began  the  nar- 
ration of  a  story  that  surprised  me  beyond  measure. 
It  was  to  this  effect. 

In  years  gone  by  this  man  and  his  wife  had  been 
happy  members  of  a  particular  church  in  that  town. 
All  went  well  until  some  trouble  arose  and  a  party 
developed  unfriendly  to  the  pastor;  sentiment  was 
divided  and  the  minister,  to  whom  this  man  was 
deeply  attached,  was  required  to  leave  the  field,  to  the 
great  distress  of  many  devoted  parishioners. 

"Then,"  said  the  man,  "I  grew  angry  at  that  and 
I  left  the  church,  and  I  got  out  into  the  world  and  I 
found  wrong  companions  and  I  got  to  drinking,  and 
things  went  from  bad  to  worse  until  I  became  the 


TACT  IN  PEBSONAL  APPEOACH        95 

godless  wretch  you  heard  blaspheming  the  other  day 
in  the  barber  shop.  I  am  ashamed,  and  I  wish  I 
could  get  back  to  the  old  times. '^ 

Well,  of  course  I  was  not  slow  in  showing  sympathy 
for  such  a  state  of  mind.  Enough  to  say  that  that 
man  and  his  wife  and  three  daughters,  ere  many  weeks, 
were  gathered  into  our  church  fold.  The  last  I  saw 
of  the  old  man  when  I  visited  the  town  years  after- 
wards, he  had  become  a  cripple,  hobbling  about  on 
crutches ;  and  as  I  crossed  the  street  to  greet  him  he 
recognized  my  features  and  invoked  a  blessing  on  my 
head  for  my  gentle  dealing  with  him  in  the  earlier 
times,  and  leading  him  back  to  the  Lord  from  whom 
he  had  wandered.  With  moistened  eyes  he  said  he 
was  looking  forward  to  the  next  life  with  a  radiant 
hope.  Of  course  it  would  have  been  easy  on  the  first 
occasion  I  met  him  to  upbraid  and  perhaps  quarrel 
with  the  man  for  his  profanity,  or  to  reason  ^^that 
man  is  beyond  reach  ^'  ;  but  there  was  a  better  way ; 
there  always  is. 

In  that  same  town  I  was  enabled  to  get  hold  of  a 
high-spirited  but  intemperate  man,  when  all  other 
efforts  had  failed,  by  taking  him  into  my  buggy  one 
evening  when  I  found  him  with  unsteady  steps  stag- 
gering on  the  street  and  driving  him  to  his  home  a 
mile  away.  I  saw  him  safely  inside  the  door  with  my 
best  wishes  to  himself  and  wife.  I  did  not  imme- 
diately see  him  rescued  from  his  habits,  but  some  time 


96  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINNIli^G 

after  I  had  left  the  towu,  in  a  marked  revival  whicli 
occuiTed,  this  same  man  one  night  rose  in  a  great  pub- 
lic meeting,  and  testified  to  the  circumstance  of  my 
picking  him  up  off  the  street  and  carrying  him  home. 
He  went  on  to  say  that  he  never  had  been  able  to 
shake  off  the  impression  of  brotherliness  thus  made 
upon  him,  and  he  came  into  a  new  life  therefrom.  Of 
course  the  last  thing  he  needed  from  me  was  a  lecture 
on  temi3erance  j  he  needed  rather  what  Joel  Stratton 
gave  to  John  B.  Gough  as  a  broken  young  man  in 
Worcester,  Mass.,  the  touch  of  a  brother's  hand  on 
his  shoulder,  at  a  time  when  it  was  easy  for  others  to 
scorn  him.  The  winner  of  souls  must  find  the  way  to 
impart  that  touch ;  it  will  be  found  only  as  a  real 
love  for  the  one  sought  springs  up  ;  and  this  the 
Divine  Spirit  must  create.  He  often  will  create  it  if 
there  is  a  consuming  desire  to  bless  another.  This 
divinely  wrought  inventiveness — this  ingenuity  in 
getting  at  men  in  an  original  way,  is  one  of  the  best 
gifts  of  the  soul  winner.  No  rules  can  be  given  for 
its  exercise  ;  each  must  develop  it  for  himself  in  orig- 
inal touch  with  the  soul  through  Christ. 

While  travelling  in  Japan  in  1890,  I  fell  in  with  a 
very  interesting  native.  He  was  living  in  a  monas- 
tery with  several  Buddhist  priests,  teaching  them  the 
English  language,  and  also  was  devoting  a  part  of  his 
time  to  teaching  Japanese  to  some  American  mission- 
aries.    He  had  read  the  Bible  throughout,  but  prob- 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH         97 

ably  self-interest  held  him  to  Buddhism.  During  two 
interviews  with  him  I  pressed  upon  him  the  imme- 
diate acceptance  of  Christ.  He  pleaded  for  more  time 
in  which  to  study  Christianity.  I  urged  that  he  did 
not  need  to  study  it  more  in  order  to  become  a  Chris- 
tian ;  that  he  should  give  his  heart  to  Christ  at  once, 
on  the  present  light  he  had,  and  then  he  could  go  on 
studying  Christianity  throughout  his  life.  He  was  so 
impressed  that  he  came  to  call  on  me  in  the  home  of 
one  of  the  missionaries  the  afternoon  on  which  I  was 
to  sail  for  China.  We  had  but  an  hour  or  so  to  be 
together,  and  I  pressed  him  strongly  to  settle  his  per- 
sonal relation  to  Christ  before  I  left.  He  was  ex- 
pressing to  me  his  great  surprise  that  a  stranger,  just 
parsing  through  his  country,  should  feel  so  deep  an 
interest  in  him,  and  he  wished  me  to  explain  it.  I 
answered,  ^'It  was  the  Christ  in  me  that  explained 
it.'^  He  protested  to  me  that  he  was  not  worthy  of 
so  much  attention,  and  he  wondered  that  I  was  so 
urgent. 

^^Why  do  you  wish  me  to  decide  so  soonf  he 
queried. 

I  answered,  ^^I  must  do  my  missionary  work  as  I 
pass.  I  cannot  remain  for  years,  as  the  resident  mis- 
sionaries here  do,  but  must  do  my  work  while  on  the 
wing,  and  for  the  brief  time  I  am  with  you  I  am  a 
missionary,  and  I  must  now  press  upon  you  the  claims 


98  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

of  my  Master  and  yours.  ^Now  is  the  accepted 
time.^  "  ' 

"But,'^  he  said,  *'Mr.  Mabie,  this  is  so  sudden." 

"But,"  I  replied,  "it  is  none  too  sudden.  You 
understand  perfectly  what  Christ  has  done  for  your 
salvation  and  it  only  remains  for  you,  by  one 
decisive  act,  to  accept  it,  and  then  go  to  work  to 
save  others." 

At  length,  finding  himself  so  closely  pressed,  he 
made  a  sudden  bid  for  time  by  thrusting  at  me  a 
speculative  question.  "But,"  said  he,  "what  do 
you  think  of  Baddha  ?  You  know  we  Japanese  are 
largely  Buddhists." 

Discerning  his  tactics,  for  I  saw  he  wished  to  draw 
me  into  discussion,  I  was  careful  to  disappoint  what 
he  expected,  viz.  :  that  I  would  put  contempt  upon 
Buddha;  for  he  had  been  told,  as  many  another 
Buddhist  unfortunately  has  been  told,  that  his  Bud- 
dha "is  in  perdition."  Now  had  I  fallen  into  this 
snare,  either  of  declaring  Buddha's  destiny  or  of 
stopping  to  argue  about  it,  I  would  have  lost  my 
friend's  respect.  Instead  thereof,  I  felt  moved  to 
answer  thus : 

"  But  this  is  no  time  for  you  to  be  seeking  refuge 

from  your  conscience  by  hiding  behind  Buddha. 

Beside,  Buddha  is  the  last  person  in  the  universe 

who  you  can  hope  will  screen  you  in  the  last  day. 

» 2  Cor.  6:2. 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH         99 

You  forget  that  Buddha  never  heard  of  Christ ;  he 
never  had  a  Bible;  he  never  met  a  Christian  mis- 
sionary, and  yet  you  have  read  the  Bible  through. 
You  know  all  about  the  Christ.  If  you  were  in  dead 
earnest,  and  every  missionary  withdrew  from  the 
land  to-day,  you  have  light  enough  for  Japan's 
evangelization,  and  God  holds  you  responsible  for  a 
large  part  in  it.'' 

I  continued:  ^^ Assuming  that  Buddha  was  the 
morally  earnest  man  he  is  said  to  have  been,  if  he 
had  had  one  hundredth  part  of  the  light  you  have 
concerning  God  and  Christ,  instead  of  filling  India, 
China  and  Japan  with  mere  Buddhism,  we  might 
believe  long  ere  this  he  would  have  practically 
Christianized  half  Asia.  In  the  judgment  day  Bud- 
dha will  be  a  swift  witness  against  you.  He  will 
ask  why,  with  all  the  Christian  light  you  had,  you 
did  not  at  once  accept  Christianity  and  become  the 
most  ardent  evangelist  in  this  empire.  You  need 
not  think  that  Buddha  will  ever  justify  you  in 
vacillation  concerning  Jesus  Christ." 

The  young  man  winced  under  the  unexpected 
turn,  and  with  real  tremor  of  conviction,  he 
asked: 

^^  What,  then,  must  I  do  *? "     I  answered  : 

"Kneel  with  me  here  on  the  spot,  and  surrender 
your  whole  heart  and  life  to  Christ,  who,  you  well 
know,  has  been  long  waiting  to  receive  you.     Act  on 


100  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINNmG 

the  light  you  have,  a  light  that  Buddha  never  had, 
and  do  it  now.'' 

'^  Well,"  he  answered,  "  I  am  ready ; "  and  kneel- 
ing there  with  me,  he  gave  himself  up,  heart  and 
soul,  to  Jesus  Christ.  Weeks  afterwards  he  wrote 
me  about  his  Christian  baptism  and  of  his  efforts  to 
tell  the  gospel  to  others. 

It  would  have  been  easy  at  the  critical  moment  for 
this  man  to  be  diverted  into  questions  of  speculation 
and  debate,  and  thus  have  been  hindered,  rather 
than  helped.  But  just  how  similar  cases  that  may 
arise  with  their  varying  objections  and  attempts  to 
evade  the  claims  of  Christ,  are  to  be  dealt  with,  is  a 
matter  that  must  be  determined  in  each  instance  by 
itself,  with  all  the  tact  that  one  can  command, 
illumined  by  the  Spirit  of  God. 

A  single  false  step  at  such  a  crisis  may  open  or 
close  the  gateway  of  life  forever. 

It  is  sometimes  too  easily  conceded  that  we  can 
scarcely  expect  men  in  advanced  years  to  change 
their  religious  attitude.  We  are  persuaded  that  this 
is  a  grievous,  practical  error.  In  such  cases,  as  in 
all  others,  much  depends  on  the  skill  of  the  worker 
either  to  disappoint  prejudice  or  to  place  himself 
positively  en  rapport  with  the  soul  he  would  win. 

In  one  of  my  pastoral  rounds  one  day,  I  dropped 
in  upon  a  man  past  sixty  years  of  age  who  was 
known  as  a  very  skillful  blacksmith  of  the  town,  an 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH       101 

artist  in  his  line,  a  man  of  rare  keenness  of  mind, 
very  opinionated  and  religiously  cynical.  I  had 
previously  been  warned  that  a  call  upon  him  would 
probably  result  similarly  to  an  approach  to  a  rabid 
dog.  However,  I  nerved  up  and  entered  the  shop. 
I  introduced  myself  and  explained  that  I  was  mak- 
ing acquaintances  in  the  new  parish  and  I  dropped 
in  to  see  him.  He  knew  but  little  of  me  except  that 
I  was  a  newly  arrived  stripling  of  a  minister.  He 
replied  by  saying  he  pitied  me  with  the  job  I  had  j 
to  bring  into  line  a  church  made  up  of  such  doubt- 
ful timber  as  I  had  in  hand. 

^'  Oh,"  I  said,  ^Hhere  are  some  pretty  good  people 
in  that  church,  better  than  we  think." 

^^No,  they  are  a  bad  lot  and  theyVe  been  divided ; 
you  have  a  tough  job." 

^'Well,  now,"  I  replied,  ^^  perhaps  it  would  be 
wiser  to  look  on  the  other  side  a  part  of  the  time ; 
then  besides,  it  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to 
find  fault  with  anybody.  There  are  no  perfect  peo- 
ple in  the  world." 

''Well,  but,  there  is  no  help  for  those  people  of 
yours." 

I  answered,  "Now,  see  here,  you  are  a  man  of 
brains  and  intelligence,  but  it  takes  no  brain  at  all  to 
find  faults  in  other  people.  I  see  you  are  working 
out  a  lot  of  fine  wheel  coulters  (referring  to  attach- 
ments used  on  the  farmer's  plough  for  cutting  the  sod 


102  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

in  front  of  the  mould-board).  Now  I  could  not  make 
one  of  those  coulters  for  my  life,  but  I  think  I  could 
find  fault  with  one  of  them  if  the  disc  was  not  perfect 
or  its  set  on  the  plough  was  badly  adjusted."  The 
man,  surprised  that  I  knew  anything  about  coulters 
and  ploughs  looked  up  and  said,  ''What  do  you 
know  about  ploughing  ?  " 

I  replied,  ''  I  was  brought  up  at  that  business.  I 
suppose,  young  as  I  am,  I  have  ploughed  more  fur- 
rows than  you  have  made  coulters." 

''Oh,  I  thought  you  were  a  kind  of  kid-gloved 
minister." 

"No!  no  matter  about  that,  let's  stick  to  my 
point.  I  could  easily  criticise  coulters,  though  I 
could  not  possibly  make  one.  It  takes  hard  work  to 
hammer  out  steel  coulters,  and  it  isn't  easy  to  make 
good  Christians  in  a  church  like  mine  j  but  both  of 
these  things  are  worth  doing  and  doing  well." 

"Very  likely,"  he  replied,  "I  like  that  talk;  I 
guess  you  are  right.  Anybody  can  find  fault,"  and 
then  he  added  :  "  But  there  is  one  thing,  elder,  that 
nobody  can  find  any  fault  with." 

I  asked,  "  What's  that  ?  " 

"  Oh,  that  life  of  Jesus  Christ." 

"  Good,"  I  said ;  "  I  am  going  to  talk  on  that  sub- 
ject Sunday  night.  Won't  you  come  around  and 
hear  me?" 

"  I  have  not  been  to  church  much  late  years,  but  I 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH       103 

believe  I  will  come  and  see  if  you  know  as  much 
about  preaching  as  you  do  about  ploughing." 

*'  All  right,"  and  having  got  him  into  a  good  mood, 
I  said,  ''  Good-afternoon,"  and  left  him. 

He  was  at  church  the  next  Sunday  evening  in  the 
front  seat,  and  some  of  my  people  stared  to  see  that 
man  in  so  close  quarters  with  the  pulpit.  I  called 
again  the  following  Monday  and  thanked  him  for 
coming,  found  he  was  pleased,  and  in  a  greatly 
altered  state  of  mind.  Soon,  I  got  near  enough  to 
extract  from  him  the  story  of  his  early  life  ^'way 
down  East  in  Vermont"  when  he  believed  Chris- 
tianity, before  the  wave  of  spiritualism  struck  the 
town,  and  swept  him  into  superstition  for  a  time,  and 
finally  left  him  morally  cheated  out  of  confidence  in 
any  religion  whatever,  until  now  he  lay  stranded  like 
an  old  hulk  upon  the  beach. 

He  admitted  he  was  not  satisfied,  that  there  must 
be  something  better,  and  he  gave  me  a  chance  to  help 
him.  In  a  few  weeks  he  came  to  the  church,  re- 
counted the  story  of  his  life  and  closed  with  a  testi- 
mony of  experience  of  the  Christ  of  the  gospels 
within  his  heart.  The  church  received  him  and 
shortly  afterwards  we  gathered  in  also  his  two  daugh- 
ters and  that  family  was  reclaimed  from  the  ranks  of 
non-church-goers  and  non-believers. 

We  often  give  up  such  people  too  easily  under  the 
influence  of  current  impressions  given  out  by  people 


104  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

who  take  men  at  their  worst,  and  we  really  make  no 
earnest  effort  to  get  at  their  better  side. 

Take  another  case ;  in  that  same  pastorate,  I  felt 
strangely  moved  one  winter,  to  go  out  into  a  country 
district  and  preach  every  night  for  three  weeks,  in  a 
schoolhouse,  and  meanwhile,  visit  every  family 
within  the  township  in  the  hope  that  there  might  be 
found  some  who  would  consent  to  be  shepherded. 

It  was  a  period  of  tramping  about,  day  after  day, 
from  farmhouse  ro  farmhouse  thi^ough  the  slush  of 
melting  snows,  taking  meals  where  I  was  invited, 
spending  the  night  in  farmhouses  to  which  they  made 
me  welcome,  and  preaching  every  evening  in  the 
schoolhouse. 

On  my  journey  out  the  first  evening  I  called  at  the 
home  of  one  of  the  strongest  characters  in  the  whole 
region.  He  had  been  a  brickmaker  and  had  ac- 
cumulated property;  had  two  grown  sons  of  whom 
he  was  very  proud ;  one  of  whom  was  the  first  candi- 
date I  had  baptized.  This  man  and  his  wife  were 
about  seventy  years  of  age.  The  afternoon  I  called 
the  wife  only  was  in.  I  explained  my  errand,  telling 
her  of  my  purpose  to  preach  every  night  in  their 
schoolhouse  and  inviting  them  to  come.  It  seems 
that  after  I  had  gone  the  wife,  not  herself  a  pro- 
fessing Christian,  said  to  her  husband,  on  his  return 
home  : 

"  Husband,  what  do  you  think  ?    Mr.  Mabie  has 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH       105 

been  here,  and  he  says  he  is  going  to  preach  every 
night  in  our  schoolhouse  for  the  next  three  weeks 
and  I  think  we  ought  to  go  to  the  meetings.  This  is 
our  chance.'^ 

'^  Just  as  you  say,''  responded  he. 

Well,  the  meetings  proceeded  from  night  to  night. 
I  was  much  at  home  amongst  them  for  I,  myself,  had 
been  reared  among  farmers,  and  knew  their  habits 
and  could  help  them  with  the  chores  on  occasions, 
and  understood  many  features  of  their  monotonous 
life. 

One  night  when  the  meetings  were  well  under  way, 
I  preached  upon  the  text :  ^^  I  will  pay  Thee  my  vows 
which  my  lips  have  uttered  and  my  mouth  hath 
spoken  when  I  was  in  trouble."  ^  In  my  discourse,  I 
spoke  as  concretely  as  possible;  using  illustrations 
from  men  in  various  situations  of  peril  or  in  crises  of 
business  in  which  they  almost  universally  make  vows 
to  God  while  the  difficulty  lasts,  and  then  when  the 
trouble  is  over,  easily  forget  their  vows.  In  con- 
clusion, I  pleaded  as  strongly  as  I  was  able  that  my 
hearers  would  pay  those  vows,  which  God  knew  they 
had  made  ;  which  they  knew  they  had  made  and 
which  were  long  overdue. 

It  was  a  meeting  of  great  solemnity.  At  the  close 
of  the  service,  as  I  was  shaking  hands  with  the  peo- 
ple on  all  sides,  my  old  friend,  the  aforesaid  brick- 
» Ps.  66  :  13,  14. 


106  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

maker,  tapped  me  on  the  shoulder,  turned  me  round, 
and  said : 

"Elder,  you  are  going  home  with  us  to-night." 

I  said :  "All  right,  Mr.  E.,  I  am  boarding  on  the 
town." 

We  soon  found  ourselves  in  the  long  wagon,  filled 
with  various  friends  from  his  part  of  the  neighbour- 
hood. The  old  gentleman  sat  on  the  front  seat  carry- 
ing a  lantern,  while  a  young  man  drove.  I  sat 
directly  behind  him.  We  had  no  sooner  started  on 
the  way  than  the  old  man  turned  round,  slapped  me 
on  the  knee,  and  said  : 

"Elder,  this  is  like  old  times  ! " 

"Old  times!"  I  said  to  myself:  "this  man  has  a 
religious  history  covered  up  somewhere  behind  him  ! " 

Little  more  was  said  until  we  reached  his  home  a 
mile  distant.  We  entered  the  house  in  perfect 
silence.  He  stirred  up  the  fire,  drew  up  some  chairs 
and  said  to  me  : 

"Now  we'll  sit  down  here  and  have  a  little  talk.  I 
have  quite  a  story  to  tell  you.  My  wife  can  sit  up 
and  hear  it  or  not  just  as  she  pleases.  Your  words 
to-night  and  your  visit  to  this  neighbourhood  among  us 
old,  hard-hearted  sinners  compel  me  to  tell  you  what 
I  have  never  told  any  one  before." 

The  man  then  began  from  the  time  when  he  was  a 
ten  year  old  boy  and  his  mother  had  been  taken 
away  by  death,  and  he  was  left  alone,  and  told  me  a 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH       107 

story  of  period  after  period  in  his  life  when  he  had 
vowed  to  God,  and  had  never  paid.  After  his 
mother's  death,  he  had  lived  a  life  of  prayer  for  some 
time,  but  never  got  courage  to  profess  his  faith.  He 
grew  to  manhood  and  migrated  to  Illinois;  mean- 
while vowing  to  God  that  if  He  would  give  him  a 
good  "  government  claim  ^'  in  the  new  region  he  then 
would  acknowledge  God  and  join  the  church ;  but  the 
vow  was  unpaid. 

f  He  then  gave  an  account  of  the  time  when,  in  1849, 
the  California  ^'  gold-fever  "  broke  out,  and  he  started 
for  the  Pacific  slope.  He  told  of  driving  from 
northern  Illinois  to  St.  Louis,  Mo.,  of  taking  a  steamer 
up  the  river  to  St.  Joseph ;  of  the  breaking  out  of 
cholera  on  board  and  men  dying  at  frequent  intervals 
during  the  night.  Every  half-hour  the  steamer  would 
draw  to  shore ;  a  man  would  be  buried  in  the  sand, 
and  then  they  would  move  on  until  another  burial, 
was  necessary.  So,  for  many  hours,  this  continued, 
the  young  man,  in  his  berth,  meanwhile  praying  and 
vowing  that  if  God  would  spare  him  from  cholera, 
then  he  would  pay  ;  but  again  he  would  forget.  He 
crossed  the  plains,  often  threatened  by  raids  of  wild 
Indians,  vowing  as  he  journeyed.  He  went  into  the 
mines  in  the  Golden  State,  vowing  day  by  day, 
and  week  by  week,  to  pay  if  God  would  prosper  him 
in  his  "finds. '^  These  vows  too  were  unpaid.  The 
time  came  when  he  turned  homeward,  by  way  of  the 


108  METHOD  11^  SOUL- WINNING 

Isthmus  to  his  family  with  a  certain  amount  of 
^^dust'^  whifch  he  had  gathered,  and  again  he  vowed 
if  God  would  give  him  a  prosperous  voyage,  then  he 
would  serve  the  Lord,  set  up  family  worship,  etc. 
The  poor  old  unseaworthy  vessel  in  which  he  shipped 
found  itself  driven  by  storm,  hundreds  of  miles  away 
from  its  course  in  the  South  Pacific,  and  then  it  be- 
came becalmed  for  weeks  together  ;  the  scurvy  broke 
out ;  men  died  daily  ;  he  too  sickened  and  thought  he 
would  die.  He  was  nursed  by  a  poor  hunchbacked 
cripple  who  was  a  Christian  and  devoted  himself  to 
his  care.  During  all  this  experience  he  prayed  and 
vowed,  and  vowed  again,  but  nothing  came  of  it.  At 
length  the  hunchback  nurse  himself  sickened  and 
died,  and  as  his  body  was  about  to  be  thrown  into  the 
sea,  the  captain  of  the  ship,  before  the  plank  was 
tilted,  asked  if  there  was  any  one  on  board  who  would 
offer  a  prayer  before  the  body  was  committed  to  the 
deep. 

Said  my  friend  :  ''  That  was  my  time.  I  owed  my 
life  to  that  hunchback  who  had  died,  but  I  hesitated. 
In  my  cowardice  I  refused.  Just  then,^^  said  he, 
^'  a  black  man,  the  cook  of  the  ship,  fell  on  his  knees 
and  prayed  such  a  prayer  as  I  have  never  heard  be- 
fore or  since,  and  do  you  know,''  said  he,  ^'  the  Lord 
at  that  moment  took  away  the  giffc  that  He  intended  I 
should  have  and  exercise,  and  gave  it  to  that  black 
man,  and  to  this  day  I  have  never  been  able  to  open 


TACT  IN  PEESONAL  APPEOACH       109 

my  mouth  in  a  public  prayer.     I  have  vowed  and 
vowed  and  yet  have  never  paid. 

*' Finally,"  said  he,  ^'our  vessel  made  its  way  to 
some  port  in  Central  America,  at  which  I  was  landed, 
and  I  made  my  way  through  feverous  and  pestilential 
regions,  step  by  step,  to  the  northern  states  and 
reached  my  home  and  found  my  wife  and  child  still 
preserved  to  me,  and  I,  still  recreant  to  my  vows. 
And  I  have  been  recreant  ever  since." 

And  thus  until  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  this  man 
detailed  his  story,  his  wife  meanwhile  sitting  in  the 
corner  of  the  room  with  her  face  buried  in  her  apron, 
convulsed  with  emotion. 

At  length  he  concluded : 

^'Now  I  am  ready  to  pay  my  neglected  vows.  I 
am  ready  to  confess  Christ  before  these  neighbours  of 
mine  and  before  the  church,  and  I  want  to  be  baptized, 
thus  following  that  son  of  mine  whom  you  recently 
took  into  your  church,  and  whose  position  is  a  con- 
stant rebuke  to  me,  his  unworthy  father."  ^ 

Suffice  it  to  say,  the  man  and  his  wife  both  came 
out,  throwing  their  whole  souls  into  their  profession 
of  new  life  in  Christ.  It  was  one  of  the  most  thrill- 
ing narratives  ever  told  me  ;  and  the  whole  event Vas 
so  unexpected  by  the  entire  neighbourhood  in  which  it 
occurred  and  by  the  church  with  which  these  friends 
united,  that  it  was  the  talk  of  the  place  for  years. 

Oh,  for  the  grace  and  guidance  to  find  our  way  to 


110  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING  i 

human  hearts,  young  and  old,  in  the  depths  of  which  i 
great  secrets  are  hidden,  waiting  for  the  person  to 

whom  they  can  be  confidingly  imparted.     It  is  my  ■ 

decided  conviction  that  if  there  were  more  Christians  ^ 

whose  hearts  were  open  to  receive  such  confidences,  ' 

God  Himself  would  see  that  more  people  were  brought  j 

to  such  confessions,  even  in  advanced  years.  ; 


VI 

CHEIST'S  METHOD  OF  SELF-DISCLOSUEE 

How  then  were  thine  eyes  opened. — John  9  :  10. 

In  preceding  chapters  I  have  been  dealing  with  the 
matter  of  evangelism  broadly,  and  yet  in  many  con- 
crete forms  illustrating  what  seem  to  me  right  meth- 
ods of  work  in  both  Christian  and  pagan  lands.  The 
principle,  of  course,  is  the  same  anywhere  and  every- 
where. In  the  present  chapter  I  make  special  appli- 
cation to  the  matter  of  dealing  with  pagan  minds  on 
foreign  mission  fields. 

In  my  wide  travel  in  Asia  some  years  ago,  I  came 
into  close  personal  touch  with  missionaries  of  many 
denominations  who  were  wrestling  with  this  matter, 
seeking  to  find  the  angle  of  approach  to  Buddhist 
Confucian  or  Hindu  heathen  minds.  In  the  midst  of 
our  common  questionings  and  difficulties,  which  more 
than  one  missionary  confessed  were  almost  insoluble 
to  him,  I  had  opportunities  to  test  this  matter  of 
method  in  ways  which  brought  new  illumination  to 
me  at  least.  I  here  give  with  some  detail  one  striking 
example  of  a  method  used  with  a  company  of  Brahmins 
which  God  seemed  to  bless. 

While  I  was  in  the  Telugu  town  of  Ongole,  South 
111 


112  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

India,  I  received  one  evening  a  visit  of  compliment 
from  a  company  of  these  Brahmin  gentlemen.  Some 
of  them  were  government  officers,  with  English  edu- 
cation, speaking  well  our  language,  and  ready  to  talk 
on  subjects  of  common  interest.  They  bore  personal 
testimony  to  the  character  of  our  missionaries  among 
them,  and  begged  us  to  enlarge  our  educational  work 
in  the  town.  The  evening  passed  delightfully,  and 
at  the  close  of  the  interview  one  of  the  more  sympa- 
thetic leaders  of  the  company  surprised  me  by  asking 
if  I  would  preach  to  them  on  the  following  Sabbath 
evening  if  they  would  come  again.  I  accepted  the  in- 
vitation. Inquiring  in  my  mind  for  a  proper  message, 
I  was  at  length  strongly  drawn  to  the  incident  of 
Christ's  healing  of  the  man  born  blind,  as  told  in  the 
ninth  chapter  of  the  Gospel  of  John,  which  sets  forth 
with  rare  clearness  Christ's  method  of  kindling  His 
own  light  in  the  soul. 

Now  Hindus  are  very  fond  of  speculative  talk  ;  the 
more  you  argue  with  a  Hindu  Brahmin,  the  more  you 
arouse  his  intellectual  pride,  and  so  the  more  com- 
pletely you  bar  the  way  to  a  practical  spiritual  result. 
Aviien  Christ's  method  is  resorted  to,  we  find  some- 
thing better  than  argument,  namely  testimony,  wit- 
ness— that  divine  something  appealing  to  the  heart 
which  shines  in  its  own  light.  The  Scripture  passage 
which  I  selected  for  exposition  affords  a  choice  in- 
stance of  the  experimental  method  of  testing  truth, 


CHRIST'S  METHOD  OF  SELF-DISCLOSURE  113 

whereby  every  seeker  for  light  may  ascertain  for  him- 
self who  the  Christ  is.  ^  I  should  say  that  on  the  pre- 
vious night  one  of  these  Brahmins  in  conversation  had 
said  to  me,  ''You  must  not  think  of  us  as  worse  than 
we  are.  In  a  sense  we  are  believers  in  Christ.  Christ 
is  undoubtedly  a  great  teacher,  a  prophet ;  only  there 
are  other  prophets."  And  he  added  with  character- 
istic Eastern  self-satisfaction,  ''And  they  are  also  vll 
Asiatics.  There  is  Confucius,  and  Mahomet,  and 
Buddha  and  Kapila,  and  others ;  but  how  shall  we 
know  that  Jesus  is  more  than  these  ?  '^  That  question 
I  felt  compelled  to  answer.  So  when  I  came  to  my 
discourse  I  began  by  saying,  "Gentlemen,  Christ  has 
given  us  a  method  whereby  we  may  certainly  know 
that  He  is  more  than  other  teachers.  He  stakes 
everything  on  one  principle,  uttered  in  this  same  gos- 
pel, '  If  any  man  willeth  to  do  His  will  he  shall  know 
of  the  doctrine,  whether  it  be  of  God,  or  whether  I 
speak  of  Myself.'  "  ^  I  then  proceeded  to  point  out 
the  rapid  growth  made  by  the  blind  man  who  was 
healed,  in  his  progressive  understanding  of  Jesus 
Christ,  who  had  wrought  the  sign  in  him.  First,  he 
saw  and  described  Him,  as  simply  "The  man  called 
Jesus"  ;  ^  then  as  "A  prophet"  ;  ^  then  as  the  One 
"Sent  from  God  "*— the  Messiah  j  then  as  "Lord,"  ** 

»  John  7: 17.  ^  Ibid.  9:11, 

Uhid.  9;  17.  */Wd.  9:33. 

»76id.  9:38. 


114  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINING 

whom  he  devoutly  worshipped.  This  was  indeed 
fapid  growth  in  a  unique  school,  very  unlike  prog- 
ress reached  thi'ough  the  merely  didactic  method.  I 
then  passed  on  to  show  that  if  we  read  between  the 
lines  in  this  story,  we  may  find  at  least  four  definite 
principles  on  which  the  man  acted  in  acquiring  his 
vision  :  principles  which  are  still  operative. 

The  first  principle  is  this :  That  in  Christ's  method 
there  must  be  sufitcient  humility  to  allow  Jesus  to  treat 
His  subject  as  He  will ;  to  let  Christ  manage  His  case 
in  His  own  way,  however  mysterious. 

When  Jesus  smeared  the  plaster  of  clay  on  the 
sightless  eyeballs  of  the  wondering  man  he  might  have 
proudly  resented  such  treatment.  Had  he  been  char- 
acterized by  the  average  amount  of  pride  which  reigns 
in  the  human  heart,  he  probably  would  have  pro- 
tested, ^'Do  you  propose  to  add  insult  to  my  injury 
by  thus  daubing  my  sightless  eyeballs  with  that  plas- 
ter of  mud? "  But  he  did  not  so.  For  some  reason 
he  was  willing  that  Christ  should  have  His  own  way 
with  him  ;  do  as  He  pleased  with  him  ;  put  him  in 
subjection  to  His  own  authority.  Thus  he  welcomed 
any  method  which  the  mysterious  sympathetic  stran- 
ger cared  to  apply.  How  it  was  that  this  man  was  so 
tractable  is  worth  inquiring.  It  is  certainly  uncom- 
mon, and  the  result  was  just  as  unique. 

I  once  asked  a  good  friend  of  mine,  a  quaint 
French  brother,  a  man  of  much  spiritual  insight, 


CHEIST'S  METHOD  OF  SELF-DISCLOSUEE  115 

whj  he  supposed  Jesus  put  the  clay  upon  the  eyes 
of  the  man.  ^'Oh,"  answered  he,  ''I  don't  know, 
unless  it  made  him  a  little  more  willing  to  go  and 
wash."  Possibly  this  was  the  reason.  Our  Lord  by 
His  providence  often  puts  us  into  a  position  wherein, 
because  of  our  new  straits,  we  become  willing  to  take 
some  other  needful  step  to  extricate  ourselves ;  and 
if  it  were  not  for  the  trial  we  would  never  get  de- 
liverance. The  trial  is  the  one  circumstance  indis- 
pensable to  the  winning  of  our  consent  to  be  led 
further  in  the  way  of  the  Lord's  will.  And  so  Jesus 
has  a  philosophy  deeper  than  our  metaphysics,  a 
method  unique,  divinely  wise.  When  once  it  is 
evident  what  Christ's  will  for  us  is,  let  us  yield  to  it, 
purely  on  trust ;  and  it  won't  be  long  before  He  will 
show  us  that  He  is  more  than  Buddha,  Mahomet  or 
Confucius,  more  than  all  other  masters. 

A  second  principle  in  this  experimental  method 
of  Christ  to  which  I  pointed  the  Brahmins  was  this  ; 
that  he  who  would  come  into  Christ's  light  must  be 
obedient  enough  to  act  on  His  word.  Eeal  inward 
faith  will  ultimately  act  upon  some  divine  word.  I 
said  to  these  Brahmins,  ''You  say  that  Jesus  is  a 
teacher  whom  you  revere.  Do  you  enough  revere 
Him  to  risk  something  by  a  line  of  action  towards 
Him  ?  If  not,  your  reverence  is  fictitious.  Do  you 
believe  that  Christ  is  a  prophet  ?  Then  trust  Him 
sufficiently  to  take  His  directions  j  give  reality  to 


116  METHOD  m  SOUL- WINNING 

His  word.  Eisk  your  life  upon  such  reality." 
After  Christ  had  put  the  clay  upon  this  man's  eyes, 
He  gave  a  word  of  command,  '  *  Now,  go  to  yonder 
pool  of  Siloam,  and  wash  it  off."  ^  Here  the  man 
might  have  said,  ^'But,  sir,  you  have  just  put  the 
clay  upon  my  eyes.  Why  now  should  I  go  to  a 
distant  pool  to  remove  it?"  But  Jesus  had  some 
reason  for  the  strange  cleansing  as  well  as  for  the 
peculiar  anointing  ;  some  deep,  divine  reason  that 
human  philosophy  could  not  fathom.  The  very 
meaning  of  the  word  ^'Siloam"  is  "sent"  ;  it  was 
an  emblem  of  Jesus,  the  eternal  fount  of  life,  that 
flows  right  out  from  beneath  the  throne  of  God. 
Jesus  Himself  was  "the  sent"  of  God.  And  now 
He  seems  to  say,  ^ '  If  you  would  be  My  disciple  be- 
coming willing  to  be  sent  by  Me,  just  as  I  was  sent 
by  the  Father.  Act  on  My  word;  go  and  wash." 
The  surprising  thing  is  that  the  man  did  not  hesitate 
to  comply.  He  promptly  started,  groping  his  way 
down  the  vale,  doubtless  soliloquizing  as  he  went, 
"That  sympathetic  teacher  tells  me  to  go,  and  I  am 
going."  He  reaches  the  pool,  he  dips  deeply  into 
the  brimming  fount,  washes,  and  lo,  as  he  turns  and 
lifts  his  cleansed  eyes  heavenward,  there  meets  him  a 
vision  never  seen  before.  There  are  the  strange  blue 
heavens,  the  walls  of  the  Holy  City,  the  Temple,  the 
valley  of  the  Kidron,  the  Mount  of  Olives,  and 
1  John  9  ;  7. 


CHEIST'S  METHOD  OF  SELF-DISCLOSUEE  117 

moving  companions  all  about  him.     How  wondi'ous 
it  all  seems ! 

"What  a  change  His  word  can  make, 
Turning  darkness  into  day  !  " 

To  make  this  point  clearer,  I  told  the  following 
incident  of  an  occurrence  in  America.  One  evening 
there  came  to  my  inquiry  meeting  a  bright  young 
German.  He  had  become  very  agnostic  in  his 
religious  position,  and  yet  he  was  so  dissatisfied  that 
he  desired  help.  He  told  me  his  story  about  as 
follows :  ^^I  was  brought  up  in  Prussia.  My  father 
was  a  minister  of  the  Established  Church.  The 
family  regime  was  pretty  rigid.  I  resisted  and  at 
length  I  broke  away  from  it  all,  and  came  off  to 
this  New  World,  since  which  time,  for  five  years,  I 
have  been  falling  away  further  and  further  from  all 
I  once  believed,  until  I  am  afraid  to  go  on.'^ 

I  replied,  "That's  a  good  sign,"  adding,  ''But 
have  you  drifted  so  far  away  that  you  have  no  faith 
ataUleftr' 

'' Oh,''  said  he,  ''I  still  believe  some  things." 
''Will  you,  then,  tell  me  some  one  thing  which 
you  still  really  believe  ■?    We'U  not  mind  just  now 
what  you  don't  believe." 

"Well,"  said  he,  "I  stiU  believe  in  God." 
"That  is  a  good  deal  to  believe  if  it  be  really  so. 


118  METHOD  m  SOUL- WINKING 

But  how  much  do  you  believe  in  Him  ?  Do  you  be- 
lieve enough  to  act  on  your  belief?  '^ 

"  A  man  ought  to.'' 

"  Certainly.  If  one  will  not  so  act  on  his  avowed 
belief,  what  do  you  think  of  him  ?  ' ' 

He  promptly  replied,  ''  He  is  a  hypocrite." 

*'Well,"  said  I,  *^he  certainly  is  not  candid, 
honest  with  himself.  Now,  on  the  basis  of  your  own 
acknowledgment,  I  want  you  to  do  the  simplest  thing 
I  can  think  of  in  the  way  of  acting  out  your  belief 
here  and  now." 

^^  What  do  you  want  me  to  do  ?  " 

^*I  want  you  to  speak  to  God.  Just  talk  to  Him 
as  you  do  to  me.'^ 

''What,  do  you  want  me  to  pray?  I  can't  make  a 
prayer." 

"Well,  then,  don't  call  it  prayer,  if  that  troubles 
you.  But  I  want  you  to  talk  to  God  in  your  own 
way,  and  so  prove  the  reality  of  your  belief  in  Him. 
I  do  not  ask  you  to  make  my  prayer  or  anybody's 
else  prayer.  You  could  not  if  you  tried  ;  you  do  not 
need  to  5  do  your  own  praying  with  just  your  present 
notion  of  God.  I  wish  you  to  risk  yourself  on  the 
truth  you  now  avow,  to  treat  the  measure  of  truth 
you  hold  as  actual  j  nothing  more  and  nothing  less." 

He  answered,  "I  shall  stammer  badly,  but  what 
you  ask  is  reasonable.'^ 

"Then,"  said  I,  "let  us  kneel  down  here." 


CHEIST'S  METHOD  OF  SELF-DISCLOSUEE  119 

We  kuelt  togetlier.  First  I  prayed,  and  when  I 
had  finished  I  waited  for  him  to  follow.  After  quite 
a  struggle,  he  broke  out :  '^Oh,  my  God,"  and  hav- 
ing gotten  his  voice,  he  went  on  step  by  step,  pour- 
ing out  a  torrent  of  confession  of  his  treatment  of 
God,  of  his  dear  old  father  away  in  Germany,  of  the 
Bible  and  Chi-ist,  and  begged  for  forgiveness,  until 
suddenly  springing  to  his  feet,  he  exclaimed,  ''Oh, 
Mr.  Mabie,  I  feel  wonderfully  changed.  Could  you 
lend  me  a  Bible ?  I  am  ashamed  I  don't  own  one.  I 
will  buy  one  to-morrow.  I  want  to  read  the  Bible." 
He  longed  for  the  biblical  explanation  of  what  had 
just  occmTed  in  his  soul.  The  man  was  of  course 
converted  before  he  knew  it,  through  simply  acting 
on  the  measure  of  truth,  however  small,  which  he 
still  cherished,  and  there  came  to  his  soul  the  sense  of 
God,  that  amazing  miracle  of  grace  which  is  always 
wrought  when  a  man  honestly  acts  on  the  faith  he 
has. 

"So,"  turning  to  my  Brahmin  friends,  I  urged, 
"  do  as  this  man  did.  Act  upon  some  simple  reality 
concerning  Christ,  which  you  have  already  become 
aware  of,  in  the  Bible  you  have  read  j  and  you  will 
soon  know  for  yourselves  yet  deeper  realities  in  the 
school  of  Christ." 

The  third  principle  discernible  in  the  method  of 
Christ  which  I  urged  upon  the  Brahmins,  was  this ; 
the  importance  of  testimony  to  the  measuie  of  faith 


120  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WIKNING 

one  has  as  fast  as  it  comes.  It  was  so  that  the  healed 
man  advanced  so  rapidly  in  the  school  of  Christ. 
When  he  saw  that  Jesus  was  simply  ''The  man  called 
Jesus,"  he  said  so.  When  later  he  saw  Him  to  be 
' '  A  prophet, ' '  he  confessed  it.  And  when  the  divine 
Messiahship  of  Jesus  broke  upon  him,  he  owned  to 
that.  Here,  be  it  observed,  was  the  particular  crux 
of  the  situation.  It  was  the  last  test  on  which  every- 
thing turned  with  him.  The  moment  the  man  con- 
fessed that  Christ  was  ''The  sent  of  God,  the  Messiah," 
that  moment  the  proud  Sanhedrists  thrust  him  out ; 
because  they  had  agreed  among  themselves  ' '  that  if 
any  man  should  confess  Jesus  to  be  the  Christ,  he 
should  be  cast  out  of  the  synagogue,"  ^  so  out  they 
thrust  him,  and  there  he  stood  in  the  environs  of  the 
Holy  Place,  suffering  alone  for  his  new  confession  of 
faith.  What  now  happened  ?  Two  things  that  under 
similar  conditions  always  occur.  Jesus  "heard  it." 
Who  told  Him  ?  A  little  before  no  man  could  find 
Jesus.  But  now,  instantly,  the  crisis  being  on  with 
a  disciple,  as  a  needle  turns  to  the  pole,  Jesus  per- 
ceives within  Himself  that  there  is  a  suffering  fol- 
lower of  His  thrown  outside  the  synagogue,  and  He 
makes  His  way  directly  to  him.  And  He  "found 
him."  ^  He  always  does;  He^ always  will,  find  the 
soul  that  feels  itself,  for  His  sake,  most  alone. 

I  was  aware  that  at  this  point  I  was  on  delicate 
.   »  John  9  :  22,  « John  9 :  35. 


CHEIST'S  METHOD  OF  SELF-DISCLOSUEE  121 

ground.  For  a  Brahmin  to  incur  the  risk  of  being 
put  out  of  the  caste  synagogue,  which  he  would  do 
if  he  confessed  Christ,  is  to  ask  him  to  face  the  thing 
he  most  fears.  If  he  breaks  caste,  his  co-religionists 
will  burn  him  in  ef&gy  in  his  native  village ;  they 
will  take  away  his  wife,  and  reduce  her  to  the  abject 
condition  of  widowhood  ;  and  consider  them  both  as 
the  offscouring  of  the  earth,  the  refuse  of  the  uni- 
verse. ^'But,"  I  continued,  ^^  remember  that,  when 
this  poor  man  once  blind,  found  himself  an  outcast, 
then  it  was,  in  that  very  moment,  that  Jesus  saw  the 
crisis  and  responded  to  it.  He  '  found  him '  j  stood 
right  before  him ;  and  put  to  him  the  query,  ^  Dost 
thou  believe  on  the  Sou  of  God  1 '  ^  Not  before  had 
Jesus  put  to  His  new  disciple  a  question  so  theo- 
logical. The  man  had  not  been  ready  for  it  before, 
but  now,  as  a  real  pupil  in  Christ's  school  he  is  ready. 
The  man  replied,  '  The  Son  of  God  !  Who  is  He,  - 
sir,  that  I  may  believe  on  Him  ?  I  am  disposed  to 
believe  anything  good  and  great  of  this  man  called 
Jesus,  this  prophet,  this  Sent  of  God.  Art  Thou  He, 
the  Blessed  Stranger,  who  didst  give  me  sight  ?  Who 
is  this  Son  of  God,  that  I  may  believe  on  Him  ?  I 
will  believe,  the  moment  I  can  know  who  He  is.'  " 
Here  is  the  real  truth-lover,  the  real  inquirer,  the 
true  pupil  in  God's  school.  Nothing  less  can  come 
to  such  an  one  than  the  full  sunrise  upon  the  soul — 
1  John  9;  35. 


122  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINKING 

such  a  sunrise  as  broke  upon  the  patriarch  of  old  at 
^'Peniel,''  meaning  'Hhe  face  of  God."  So  Christ 
answers  the  whole-hearted  query  by  saying,  ' '  The  Son 
of  God  !  Why,  thou  hast  both  seen  Him,  and  He  it 
is  that  talketh  with  thee  j  I  am  He."  How  otherwise 
could  the  man  respond  than  to  say,  ''  Lord,  I  believe,"^ 
and  he  worshipped  Him.  He  is  orthodox  at  last. 
^' The  man  called  Jesus"  is  now  seen  to  be  divine. 

Such  is  the  road  to  real  orthodoxy,  the  experi- 
mental road,  more  direct  than  the  speculative  way. 
It  may  take  one  a  lifetime  to  find  the  guide  post  even 
to  the  philosophical  road ;  but  coming  to  Jesus  as  we 
are,  even  though  it  be  to  become  an  outcast,  we  find 
it  at  once,  and  the  work  is  done. 

Some  years  ago  in  the  West  a  brother  minister  of 
mine  told  me  this  story.  Calling  one  day  on  a  lady 
who  was  a  member  of  his  church,  the  woman's  hus- 
band, who  was  not  a  member,  came  in  and  pleasantly 
saluting  the  pastor,  said,  ^^  Doctor,  we  are  very  glad 
to  see  you  in  our  home.  My  wife  is  a  member  of 
your  church,  but  I  am  not.  Indeed,  there  are  many 
things  in  your  creed  I  could  not  possibly  accept,  but 
I  believe  more  than  many  people  suppose."  Eeplied 
the  tactful  pastor,  ^'  Would  you  kindly  tell  me  plainly 
what  you  believe  more  than  people  suppose?" 

^^  Oh,  I  believe  that  Jesus  is  the  teacher,  perhaps 
the  greatest  teacher  the  world  ever  saw." 
» John  9;  38.  , 


CHEIST'S  METHOD  OF  SELF-DISCLOSUEE  123 

^'  Do  you  really  believe  that? "  asked  the  pastor. 

^^Ido." 

^^Well,  then,''  continued  the  pastor,  ^^  would  you 
mind  coming  to  our  next  prayer  meeting,  and  telling 
us  as  much?" 

^*  What!  Think  of  my  coming  to  a  prayer  meet- 
ing and  doing  that !  Would  you  make  a  hypocrite 
of  me  ?    What  would  the  Church  people  think  ?  " 

^'Didn't  you  speak  as  an  honest  man,  just  now, 
when  you  said  you  believed  more  than  people  sup- 
posed, even  that  Jesus  is  the  teacher?  If  you  spoke 
honestly,  as  I  believe  you  did,  I  cannot  see  how  there 
could  be  any  hypocrisy  in  telling  it  out  among  your 
neighbours  and  friends.  I  have  heard  you  say  it. 
Your  wife  heard  it.  I  think  it's  down  in  the  Book  of 
Eemembrance  above.    Why  not  let  all  men  know  it ?  " 

"Well,"  said  the  man,  "that's  a  new  way  of  put- 
ting it.     I'll  think  about  it." 

And  think  about  it  he  did,  and  to  so  much  purpose 
that  he  came  to  a  mid-week  meeting  soon  after,  and 
at  a  fitting  moment,  arose  and  repeated  the  conversa- 
tion, which  the  skillful  pastor  had  had  with  him  a 
few  days  previously.  Then  he  added,  "My  friends, 
in  thinking  over  this  matter  I  find  I  believe  a  great 
deal  more  than  I  did  when  I  met  the  pastor  last.  I 
then  said  I  accept  Jesus  Christ  as  a  great  teacher. 
But  I  accept  Him  now  as  my  teacher,  and  on  the  whole 
I  accept  Him  as  my  Master  and  Saviour."     The  man 


124  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

was  practically  converted  on  his  feet.  And  he  went 
out  of  that  prayer  meeting  a  changed  man.  Such 
doing  of  the  truth  is  always  true  to  Christ's  method. 
This  man  might  have  sat  down  in  a  great  library  or 
in  some  lecture  hall,  with  a  lot  of  philosophical 
theorists  and  speculated  endlessly,  until  his  heart  was 
hardened  and  his  conscience  seared  and  the  light  in 
him  had  become  turned  to  darkness.  But  instead  he 
took  Christ's  wiser,  straighter,  immediate  method  to 
the  realization  of  who  He  was,  and  he  came  at  once 
to  ^^know  Him." 

The  fourth  principle  in  the  method  of  Christ  illus- 
trated in  the  narrative,  to  which  I  directed  my  Brah- 
min hearers,  was  this  :  One  must  dare  to  stand  alone. 
It  takes  some  coui-age  to  do  this.  It  is  here  chiefly 
that  we  break  down.  ^'Conscience  doth  make 
cowards  of  us  all."  The  world  makes  us  cowards. 
Our  family  relatives  render  us  craven.  Our  caste  re- 
lations unman  us.  This  man  in  the  gospel,  however 
ignorant  or  poor  or  blind  he  was,  was  not  a  coward. 
He  dared  to  stand  alone,  absolutely  alone.  At  a  cer- 
tain stage  in  the  controversy  between  the  Pharisees 
and  the  healed  man,  these  proud  religionists  appealed 
to  the  parents  of  the  man  and  said,  ''Is  this  your 
son?" 

"Yes." 

"  Was  he  born  blind  ?  " 

"He  was." 


CHEIST'S  METHOD  OF  SELF-DISCLOSUEE  125 

** How  is  it  that  he  now  sees?  " 

"Oh,  we  don't  know.  He  is  of  age ;  ask  him.'' 
This  they  said  because  they  feared  the  Jews.  They 
forsook  their  unfortunate  child,  the  last  thing  a  true 
parent  will  do.  I  have  heard  of  a  mother  who  fol- 
lowed her  son  through  crime,  imprisonment  and  to 
the  scaffold,  and  when  afterwards  he  was  buried  in  a 
Potter's  field,  she  begged  that  she  might  be  buried  be- 
side him.  But  on  this  occasion  this  Jewish  mother, 
sustained  by  the  father,  neither  of  them  fit  to  bear  the 
title  of  parent,  left  the  poor  inquirer  after  Christ, 
whose  eyes  had  been  opened  by  His  touch,  whose  in- 
ward soul  had  been  illumined  to  the  degree  of 
prophet-hood,  forsook  him  that  was  bone  of  their  bone 
and  flesh  of  their  flesh.  For  all  they  cared,  they  said, 
"let  him  be  cast  out  of  the  synagogue."  But  the  son 
wavered  not.  He  reached  out,  believingly,  in  the  un- 
certainty of  an  outcast  condition,  till  Jesus  came  and 
found  him.  He  knew  the  meaning  of  the  psalmist's 
words,  "When  my  father  and  my  mother  forsake 
me,  then  the  Lord  will  take  me  up."  ^ 

And  so,  to  my  Brahmin  hearers  I  could  not  say  less 
than  this:  "Should  you  be  thrown  out  of  your 
caste,  in  the  i)rocess  of  discovering  for  yourselves  who 
the  Christ  is,  remember  that  to  be  cast  oict  with  Christ- 
is  to  be  cast  in  with  God." 

But  I  am  asked,  ^ '  What  of  the  outcome  ?  " 
» Ps.  27  :  10. 


126  METHOD  IN  SOIJL- WINKING 

Well,  the  very  next  morning,  one  of  these  Brah- 
mins, an  officer  of  the  government,  came  to  the  mis- 
sion house,  begging  to  see  me,  and  proceeded  to 
say, 

"Oh,  sir,  I  thought  I  must  see  you  this  morning, 
almost  before  breakfast.  I  didn't  sleep  a  wink  last 
nighf 

I  inquired,  "Why  not,  Mr.  E.  1" 

"Oh,  that  revelation  of  human  nature  con- 
tained in  the  chapter  you  expounded !  I  never 
saw  it  before,  sir,  on  that  fashion.  Is  it  true,  sir  ? 
Oh,  is  it  true?  Must  I  break  my  caste  in  order 
really  to  know  who  Christ  is?" 

"Well,"  I  replied,  "my  brother,  that  man  in  the 
gospel  indeed  broke  his  caste.  He  went  out  of  the 
synagogue  alone,  but  he  met  the  Christ  at  the  exit. 
And  you  will,  if  you  will  be  as  brave  as  he.  In  any 
case,  you  must  dare  to  stand  alone  if  you  would  have 
Christ's  full  illumination." 

"Oh,  then,"  said  he,  "pray  for  me  !" 

We  knelt  together,  and  after  I  had  prayed  he 
followed  me,  in  an  outpouring  of  heart  touching  in 
the  extreme.  He  pleaded  with  many  tears  that  Christ 
would  not  let  him  die  in  his  sins ;  that  God  would 
give  him  grace,  even  if  his  Hindu  fellows  cast  him 
out  forever.  We  had  many  words  of  sympathetic  in- 
tercourse together,  then  and  afterwards.  He  has  since 
passed  away,  and  I  can  only  hope  for  a  blessed  outcome. 


CHEIST'S  METHOD  OF  SELF-DISCLOSUEE  12? 

Then  an  hour  afterwards  there  came  a  second 
Brahmin,  a  teacher  in  the  high  school,  and  he 
said, 

*'  Oh,  my  dear  sir,  I  had  to  see  you  also.  I  think 
I  understand  what  you  were  talking  about  last  night ; 
but  how  can  I  know  it  better,  be  sure  who  Christ  is, 
and  come  into  a  state  of  peace "?  '^ 

Then  he  began  to  hedge  and  to  draw  back  from 
any  public  acknowledgment  of  what  he  confessed 
to  me. 

"Well,'^  I  said,  ^'you  must  take  Christ's  direc- 
tions, and  walk  in  the  best  light  you  have,  no  matter 
what  it  costs,  or  where  it  leads,  and  the  light  is 
certain." 

I  left  him  in  India,  struggling  with  that  question. 
He,  however,  wrote  me  weeks  afterwards,  thanking 
me  for  the  message  of  that  evening,  and  begging  for 
patience  and  prayers  still.  Then  some  months  later, 
when  Doctor  Clough  came  to  this  country  he  told  me 
that  the  old  caste  man  who  had  conveyed  the  invita- 
tion that  I  should  preach  had  just  died  a  Christian's 
death,  renouncing  at  the  last  Hinduism  forever,  and 
owning  that  he  had  long  been  a  secret  believer. 

Thus  among  these  Hindus,  Christ  set  His  seal 
upon  His  truth  and  honoured  an  exposition  of  His 
own  method,  giving  some  fruit,  even  among  these 
Gentiles. 

It  is  with  me  a  profound  conviction  that  as  a 


128  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINKING 

matter  of  method  in  some  of  the  more  primary  stages 
of  the  foreign  missionary's  work  among  the  heathen, 
relatively  too  much  emphasis  has  been  placed  upon 
the  mere  matter  of  communicating  a  body  of  theo- 
logical truth  as  such,  and  far  too  little  use  has  been 
made  of  loyal  action  upon  some  one  truth  already 
known.  In  these  later  days  of  mission  work  when 
great  numbers  of  people  even  in  pagan  lands  have 
already  single  truths  enough  in  mind  to  enable  them 
to  come  into  ihe  realization  of  Christ,  why  not  induce 
them  immediately  to  act  upon  the  light  they  have. 
It  is  not  true  that  people  in  heathendom  or  elsewhere 
need  to  have  before  them  a  great  variety  of  abstract 
theological  truths  before  they  can  be  spiritually  re- 
newed and  become  inducted  into  the  school  of  Christ. 
It  is  amazing  how  little  truth  is  essential  to  salvation. 
The  missionary  often  can  well  afford  to  presume  upon 
the  fact  that  many  all  about  him  in  regions  where  the 
gospel  has  been  preached  somewhat  widely,  already 
know  enough  to  be  saved.  The  practical  thing 
needed  is  that  by  the  help  of  the  Spirit  in  some  tact- 
ful way  these  should  be  led  to  commit  themselves  to 
the  truth  they  know.  To  do  this,  is  in  principle 
faith,  is  the  belief  of  the  heart  and  the  executive  act 
of  the  entire  soul.  To  those  who  will  thus  act,  Christ 
Himself  will  lift  the  veil  and  through  His  own  miracle, 

stand  SELF-DISCLOSED. 


VII 

THE  FIELDS  WHITE  UNTO  HAEYEST 

"  Behold  I  say  unto  you,  lift  up  your  eyes  and  look  on  the 
fields  that  they  are  white  already  unto  harvest." — John  4  :  35. 

In  the  light  of  what  has  been  said,  doubtless  the 
earnest  reader  has  asked,  ''  But  how  does  this  matter 
of  personal  effort  for  individuals  bear  on  the  larger 
problem  ^of  the  salvation  of  the  masses  %  How  may 
the  multitude  in  a  given  community  be  reached ;  a 
tribe  of  the  heathen  collectively  be  Christianized  1  '^ 

These  queries  are  most  pertinent.  As  I  have  pre- 
viously stated,  it  may  not  indeed  be  the  province  of 
all  Christians,  however  earnest,  to  initiate  great  and 
successful  general  revivals.  Nevertheless,  such  are 
the  divine  expectations  respecting  the  prevalence  of 
Christ's  kingdom  that  we  must  believe  in  frequent 
and  even  sudden  spiritual  ingatherings  throughout 
the  Gospel  era.  Ours  is  the  Jubilee  age  of  the 
Gospel :  the  period  distinctly  set  forth  in  the  Scrip- 
tures as  "the  times  of  the  Gentiles"  ;  the  time  of 
world-wide  witnessing. 

There  is  always  a  close  relation  between  the  start- 
ing of  one  soul  and  the  moving  of  a  wide  circle  of 
souls  Christward.    In  all  the  revivals  I  have  ever 

129 


130  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WIIOING 

known  a  striking  characteristic  has  been  the  manner 
in  which  one  new  convert  has  won  others  by  a  very 
contagion  of  new  life.  We  can  never  tell  how  broad 
may  be  the  sweep  of  the  influence  of  one  true  convert. 
Krishna  Pal's  renewal  in  Serampore  initiated  a  wide 
movement  that  continues  in  ever  enlarging  circles 
among  the  Hindus.  When  Ko  Thah  Byu  in  Burma, 
formerly  a  poor  slave,  became  a  Christian,  it  did  not 
appear  to  signify,  but  it  was  the  inception  of  the 
salvation  of  the  Hill  tribes  of  Burma  by  tens  of 
thousands.  More  than  four  thousand  converts  from 
one  tribe  have  been  won  to  Christ  within  the  past 
two  years.  The  fragment  of  a  tract  which  led 
Neesima  to  God  became  a  myriad-tongued  witness  to 
all  Japan. 

Probably  the  most  characteristic  illusion  of  public 
Christian  workers  is  the  notion  they  commonly  have 
that  they  must  convert  people  by  masses,  through 
some  stroke  of  genius  in  public  discourse,  or  marked 
demonstration  in  organization.  But  thinking  people 
are  rarely  converted  en  grosse^  however  differently  it 
may  appear.  The  very  men  reputed  to  have  large, 
popular  evangelizing  power  have  at  least  had  their 
introduction  to  such  power  in  the  practice  of  win- 
ning souls  one  by  one  in  the  secret  places.  This  was 
peculiarly  true  of  Mr.  Moody.  He  was  never  above 
the  work  of  constant,  personal  watching  for  inquirers. 
He  probably  conversed  and  prayed  individually  with 


THE  FIELDS  WHITE  UNTO  HAEVEST    131 

more  persons  than  any  man  of  his  time.  Dr.  Torrey, 
Evan  Eoberts,  and  others,  who  of  late  have  com- 
manded much  attention,  have  been  foremost  in  enlist- 
ing many  persons  to  bring  their  associates  to  public 
meetings,  to  labour  with  inquirers  singly  in  inquiry 
meetings  and  elsewhere.  The  greatest  evangelists 
confess  themselves  powerless  without  such  reinforce- 
ment. There  is  no  substitute  for  the  one  by  one  way. 
To  save  many,  we  must  first  save  one.  If  the  Church 
would  bring  about  Hawaiian  evangelization,  it  needs 
an  Oo-Boo-Kiah  as  well  as  a  Titus  Coan  for  its 
initiation.  If  we  would  bring  on  the  Telugu  harvest, 
there  must  first  be  the  Prayer-Meeting  Hill  incident 
with  the  Jewetts  and  two  or  three  native  believers  in 
a  peculiar  and  divine  fellowship.  The  Pentecost  on 
the  Congo  sprang  from  one  repentant  man  under  the 
story  of  the  Cross  as  told  by  Henry  Eichards  after 
years  of  almost  fruitless  work.  A  single  trophy  the 
converted  ^'Africaner"  brought  to  triumph  a  halt- 
ing mission  in  South  Africa.  The  amazing  movement 
in  Uganda  at  one  time  threatened  with  extinction 
even  after  Mackay's  extraordinary  apostolate,  took 
on  a  new  life  after  a  few  natives  had  become  re- 
pentant after  the  awful  atrocities  perpetrated  by 
King  Mwanga.  To-day  fifty  thousand  of  the  Uganda 
people  are  discipled  to  Christ.  The  great  move- 
ments in  Manchuria,  Korea,  and  the  Philippine 
Islands,  had  their  beginnings  in  a  few  native  con- 


132  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINNING 

verts.  To  convert  one,  therefore,  may  be  to  convert 
a  thousand.  The  law  of  geometrical  ratio  prevails. 
The  spark  may  kindle  the  forest, — a  nation  be  ''born 
in  a  day." 

The  works  of  Augustine  and  Columba,  of  Boniface 
and  Ansgar,  of  Wesley  and  Whitefield,  of  Finney, 
Spurgeon  and  Moody,  will  be  wrought  over  again  and 
again  in  differing  forms  in  enlarging  spheres,  as 
individuals  being  empowered  by  the  Spirit  of  God 
impress  their  message  first  upon  some  one  soul. 

If  in  the  defections  from  faith  to  rationalism,  if 
through  increase  of  worldliness  and  coldness  in  the 
church,  there  come  times  when  men  will  say,  ' '  Alas ! 
the  great  revivals  are  over"  j  yet  in  that  very  hour, 
there  will  be  starting  in  some  lad  somewhere  a  new 
divine  fire  which  will  yet  envelop  a  continent  with 
the  power  of  some  long-forgotten  divine  message,  and 
as  under  another  Savonarola,  potentates  of  the  earth 
will  be  caused  to  tremble. 

We  should  indeed  remind  ourselves  that  whatever 
be  the  means  employed,  all  men  will  not  believe  the 
gospel  and  be  saved.  Even  under  Christ's  personal 
ministry,  this  was  true.  ' '  Behold  this  child  is  set 
for  the  falling  and  the  rising  of  many  in  Israel  and 
for  a  sign  which  is  spoken  against ;  yea,  and  a  sword 
shall  pierce  through  thine  own  soul ;  that  thoughts 
out  of  many  hearts  maybe  revealed,"  was  the  testi- 
mony of  the  aged  Simeon  to  Mary.     The  same  gospel 


THE  FIELDS  WHITE  UNTO  HAEVEST    133 

which  unto  some  is  a  ^^  savour  from  life  unto  life,''  to 
others  is  a  ''  savour  from  death  unto  death.'' 

The  Bible  does  not  explain  this  and  we  cannot ; 
sin  whose  climax  is  unbelief  is  in  fact  spiritual 
insanity.  All  faithful  preaching  of  the  gospel,  even 
at  its  best,  taking  human  nature  as  it  is,  will  result 
in  the  hardening  of  some,  and  the  melting  of  others. 
That  risk  all  true  labourers  for  Christ  must  assume, 
and  leave  the  result  with  God.  With  this  allowance, 
however,  for  the  sad  fact  which  any  sound  view  of 
Christian  evangelism  must  reckon  upon,  it  is  still 
true  that  Christ  warrants  the  hope  of  large  and  not 
small  fruitfulness  to  those  who  engage  in  His  work. 

''He  that  goeth  forth  and  weepeth,  bearing  seed 
for  sowing,  shall  doubtless  come  again  with  joy, 
bringing  his  sheaves  with  him." 

Eeferring  to  the  results  of  His  own  reconciling 
death,  which  He  deemed  a  planting  rather  than  a 
burial,  and  the  certain  resurrection  which  attested 
its  divine  import,  Christ  said  of  the  sequel,  ' '  It 
beareth  much  fruit."  Then  no  one  need  be  pessi- 
mistic respecting  the  avails  of  the  travail  of  the 
Saviour's  soul,  if  only  the  presentation  of  truth  be 
rightly  made,  in  the  experience  and  power  of  it. 

As  an  object  lesson  intended  exi)ressly  to  set  forth 
the  scale  on  which  Christ  expected  results  from  gospel 
effort.  He  wrought  the  two  miracles  called  ''the  su- 
pernatural draughts  of  fishes."     What  these  signs 


134  METHOD  IN  SOUL-WINNING 

really  meant  to  teach,  however,  was  the  supernatural 
catch  of  human  souls  that  might  be  expected  when  the 
nets  were  cast  according  to  His  word.  Of  course,  if 
efforts  are  made  in  some  form  of  half-secularized 
endeavour,  only  failure  can  be  expected.  When  the 
disciples  after  Christ's  resurrection  temporarily  lost 
faith  in  any  further  divine  manifestation  of  Himself, 
in  impatient  petulance  they  all  joined  with  Peter 
and  said,  ''  I  go  a-fishing."  Nothing  short  of  a  fresh 
epiphany  of  Himself  rendered  them  again  divinely 
effective. 

There  is  on  record  in  the  Gospel  of  John  one  strik- 
ing experience  in  the  life  of  our  Lord  which  is  evi- 
dently intended  to  encourage  His  workers  to  expect 
large  results  in  evangelism  where  there  is  the  least 
promise  of  it.  I  refer  to  the  event  which  occurred  at 
Sychar,  when  the  Saviour  met  the  woman  at  the 
well  and  the  revival  in  Samaria  immediately  ensued. 
This  certainly  was  a  most  unexpected  event,  a  sud- 
den revival.  No  field  apparently  could  have  been 
more  unpromising.  The  Samaritans  were  a  commu- 
nity fairly  insulated  against  Judaistic  influence  of  any 
sort :  prejudice  was  strong  and  bitter,  as  between 
this  half-heathen  community  and  the  holy  city  of 
Jerusalem.  Now  there  must  be  a  real  philosophy  at 
the  basis  of  the  extraordinary  outcome  of  this  visit 
of  Jesus. 

The  point  in  the  lesson  is  easy  to  miss  altogether ; 


THE  FIELDS  WHITE  UNTO  HAEYEST    135 

The  persistent  human  habit  is  to  trace  the  analogies 
between  the  workings  of  nature  and  those  of  grace. 
In  this  instance,  however,  Christ  is  showing  how  op- 
positely to  what  we  call  nature  the  Spirit  works  in 
the  realm  of  grace.  It  is  true  as  concerns  the  natural 
harvest  that  a  period  of  months  must  elapse  between 
seedtime  and  harvest,  and  so  there  is  a  maxim,  ^'yet 
four  months  and  then  cometh  harvest."  The  farmer 
must  expect  delay  in  the  practical  process  of  gather- 
ing his  grain ;  but  Christ  here  is  teaching  that  this 
need  not  be  the  case  at  all  in  the  matter  of  winning 
souls  to  Himself,  and  so  He  speaks  a  word  most  sur- 
prising, '' Behold,  I  say  unto  you,  look  on  the  fields 
that  they  are  white  already  unto  harvest."  This  is 
so  although  there  has  apparently  been  no  seed-sowing 
at  all,  nor  time  for  it.  The  whiteness,  of  course,  was 
invisible  to  all  eyes  but  His.  But  He  shortly  proved 
the  ripeness  by  actually  garnering  the  crop.  What 
was  it  that  so  whitened  those  fields  ?  What  sort  of 
prescience  caught  the  vision  of  Christ  to  which  the 
disciples  were  blind  ? 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  Christ  was  divine,  and 
anything  was  possible  where  He  was.  This  was  not 
a  miracle  strictly  speaking,  nor  did  Christ  work  arbi- 
trarily for  the  mere  sake  of  showing  His  power  j  and 
yet  His  presence  on  the  scene  brought  the  sudden 
change.  We  may  be  confident  He  wrought  the  result 
on  principles  perfectly  consonant  with  the  normal  ac- 


136  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

tivities  of  His  followers.  He  meant  His  achievement 
to  be  an  object  lesson  to  them,  and  the  inference  to  be 
drawn  from  it  is  plain  that  the  disciples  of  Christ  also 
by  the  Spirit  of  God  may  often  bring  about  just  such 
sudden  and  wide-spread  changes  in  the  life  of  commu- 
nities, if  in  themselves  they  are  right  towards  God 
and  their  fellows.  Fields  are  still  white,  ever  white, 
on  many  sides  in  Christendom,  and  in  pagandom  also, 
if  only  Christ  in  the  person  of  His  workers  is  there 
with  the  anointed  eye  to  see  the  golden  grain. 

Beading  between  the  lines  of  this  remarkable  nar- 
rative, we  may  discern  certain  clear  principles  on 
which  that  revival  was  wrought,  principles  on  which 
other  revivals  also  may  be  expected  to  occur,  however 
discouraging  the  conditions  appear. 

In  an  important  sense  Christ  brought  that  revival 
with  Him ;  and  just  as  truly  we  must  bring  the  re- 
vival to  the  communities  in  which  we  labour.  This 
was  not  a  case  in  which  a  reaper  happened  along  ^'  in 
the  nick  of  time,"  to  save  the  grain  ready  of  itself  to 
fall  into  the  hand.  This  coming  of  the  Eeaper  in  the 
precise  way  He  did,  itself  yellowed  the  corn  and  filled 
the  granary.  There  are  laws  higher  than  natural 
which  control  the  spiritual  seasons.  To  the  King  in 
this  realm,  October  or  May  in  the  process  of  the  spir- 
itual suns  was  alike  productive.  In  large  measure 
may  it  not  be  so  likewise  in  our  case  ? 

Note  some  of  the  principles  at  the  root  of  this 


THE  FIELDS  WHITE  UNTO  HAEVEST    137 

Samaritan  revival  which  are  as  applicable  to  us  now 
as  to  Jesus  then  : 

(a)  The  Divine  Eeaper  found  His  supreme  satis- 
faction— His  very  food — in  the  accomplishment  of  the 
task  on  which  His  Father  sent  Him.  He  was  there- 
fore one  through  whom  on  a  plane  quite  above  the 
natural  and  apparent,  His  Father  could  pour  all  the 
energy  of  His  grain-producing  power.  Working  in 
perfect  consistency  with  the  All-Holy,  the  harvesting 
order  of  the  world  was  at  its  maximum.  With  us  the 
delays  in  spiritual  harvest  are  often  due  to  our  own 
spiritual  immaturity:  we  wait  not  only  ''four 
months,"  but  long  years,  and  no  fruit  matures.  Per- 
haps we  ourselves  would  be  injured  by  the  gratifica- 
tion of  our  untimely  desires,  and  we  are  in  no  normal 
relation  to  the  spiritual  renewal  of  our  fellows.  In 
case  spiritual  children  were  born  to  us,  the  requisite 
moral  warmth  to  nurse  and  rear  them  is  lacking  :  but 
as  for  Jesus  at  the  well,  the  passion  of  His  soul  went 
out  after  the  perishing  about  Him.  Hungry  though 
He  was,  so  that  His  disciples  needed  to  go  and  buy 
food,  yet  He  famished  unspeakably  more  for  the  will 
of  God  to  be  accomplished  in  Sy char's  villagers,  and 
when  He  saw  one  soul  transformed  into  a  potential 
messenger  of  His  Father's  grace.  His  Spirit  was  in- 
stantly braced  to  new  vigour.  His  disciples  arriving 
with  the  food,  perceiving  that  He  was  already  so  re- 
freshed, asked  ' '  Hath  any  man  brought  Him  aught  to 


138  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

eat  1  ^^  He  had  really  banqueted  on  viands  all  invisi- 
ble to  them.  His  meat  was  ''  to  do  the  will  of  Him 
that  sent  Him,  and  to  accomplish  His  work '' — a  meat 
so  deeply  satisfying  that  He  said,  "ye  know  not  of 
it.  Not  yet  were  the  disciples  soul-winners;  they 
were  without  capacity  for  so  high  a  task.  They  were 
mere  partisans  in  a  religious  camp  ready  to  break 
a  lance  with  their  rivals,  rather  than  to  share  with 
them  the  Father's  grace.  The  state  of  the  Master's 
will  respecting  His  Father's  purpose  for  Him  made 
all  the  difference. 

(p)  Then  this  Master  Eeaper  established  a  friendly 
relation  to  the  woman  He  met.  He  found  the  right 
point  of  contact ;  He  was  humanly  as  well  as  divinely 
wise :  He  used  that  most  uncommon  thing — common 
sense — in  relation  to  another  spirit :  He  did  one  of  the 
most  effective  things  possible  for  overcoming  aver- 
sion; He  asked  a  favour.  "Give  me  to  drink." 
Could  anything  be  simpler  or  more  pleasing  than 
handing  a  cup  of  cold  water  to  a  way-worn  traveller  ? 
Thus  the  key  to  the  woman's  heart  was  won. 

(c)  Jesus  also  disappointed  prevailing  prejudice. 
What  tact  there  was  in  the  simple  favour  asked  :  He 
who  begged  to  drink  is  a  Jew,  and  she  who  is  asked 
to  give  it,  a  Samaritan.  She  wonders  with  great  sur- 
prise at  the  unwonted  simplicity.  He  meant  she 
should.  He  disarms  her  suspicion,  using  the  very 
method  which  shall  shortly  move  her  even  against 


THE  FIELDS  WHITE  UNTO  HAEVEST    139 

her  fears,  to  request  grace  from  Him.  His  method 
won  her  to  make  the  plea. 

In  our  late  Civil  War,  an  earnest  chaplain  one 
day  after  a  battle  came  upon  a  poor  wounded  soldier, 
prostrate  on  the  field,  apparently  dying.  The  chap- 
lain knelt  beside  him  and  asked  ; 

^'My  dear  fellow,  would  you  like  to  have  me  read 
the  Bible  to  your' 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,''  replied  the  soldier,  "lam 
scorched  with  thirst." 

The  chaplain  ran  to  the  nearest  spring  and  returned 
with  abundant  water ;  the  man  drank  with  despera- 
tion, and  then  he  added : 

"  My  wound  is  oozing  so  that  it  has  saturated  my 
clothing,  until  it  sticks  to  my  body." 

The  chaplain  removed  the  stained  garments,  bathed 
the  wound,  and  then  took  off  his  own  shirt  and  put  it 
on  the  suffering  man,  and  remarked  : 

"  Now  my  dear  fellow,  I  hope  you  feel  better." 

The  soldier  looked  up  and  replied  :  "  Oh,  so  much 
better,  and  now  if  you  have  any  book  that  tells  a  man 
to  act  like  that,  you  can  read  it  to  me." 

(d)  Christ  sought  for  the  particle  of  faith  there 
was  in  the  woman,  and  when  found  built  upon  it. 
The  woman  had  let  drop  a  suggestion  for  which  the 
Saviour  was  alert :  ' '  Art  thou  greater  than  our  father 
Jacob  who  gave  us  the  well  and  drank  thereof  him- 
self, and  his  sons,  and  his  cattle?"    Here  was  the- 


140  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

ology  enough  for  the  present  need.  ''She  is  a  be- 
liever in  the  patriarch  Jacob,"  mused  Christ :  "there 
is  faith  in  the  embryo.  Starting  from  that  I'  11  lead  her 
to  Myself,  the  well  deeper  and  diviner  than  all  wells 
of  the  patriarchs." 

(e)  Jesus  developed  the  woman's  spiritual  thirst : 
He  so  testified  of  the  indwelling  spring  of  life  that 
the  woman  craved  a  draught  from  it : 

"Sir,  give  me  this  water  that  I  thirst  not,  neither 
come  all  the  way  hither  to  draw." 

Emerson  somewhere  says  that  human  nature  is  slow 
to  believe  that  another  has  a  finer  power  of  spiritual 
discrimination  than  one's  self ;  the  moment,  however, 
that  one  is  convinced  of  it,  that  moment  the  soul's 
expectation  of  the  other  becomes  boundless.  Thus 
this  woman  could  not  withhold  the  expression  of  her 
spiritual  thirst  the  moment  she  was  convinced  she 
had  met  the  Master  of  the  soul. 

(/)  Christ  awoke  in  the  woman  conviction  for  sin, 
and  yet  how  delicately  !  Ere  one  can  taste  the  water 
of  life,  sin  must  be  acknowledged.     So  Jesus  says  : 

"Go  call  thy  husband  and  come  hither."  The 
hint  was  enough. 

"I  have  no  husband." 

"Jesus  saith  unto  her,  thou  saidst  well,  I  have 
no  husband  :  for  thou  hast  had  five  husbands  :  and 
he  whom  thou  now  hast  is  not  thy  husband  :  this 
hast  thou  said  truly." 


THE  FIELDS  WHITE  UNTO  HAEVEST    141 

To  this  searching  insight,  one  answer  was  inevi- 
table. 

"The  woman  saith  unto  him,  Sir  I  perceive  that 
thou  art  a  prophet.  Thou  readest  my  life  like  an 
open  book,  perhaps  thou  hast  pardon  and  cleansing 
for  me — a  grace  to  offer. '^ 

And  now  the  woman  moralizes  respecting  worship 
and  its  sacred  places  :  she  becomes  religious,  which 
affords  the  Master  the  opportunity  for  declaring  the 
essence  of  true  religion,  namely  the  worship  of  the 
Father  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 

(g)  But  Jesus  also  had  with  Him  that  day  the  full 
answer  to  the  ultimate  religious  need  :  He  brought 
her  the  present  Messiah — the  Saviour.  Led  on  from 
point  to  point,  at  length  the  woman  in  the  outburst 
of  her  final  longing  said,  "I  know  that  Messiah 
Cometh  (He  that  is  called  Christ):  when  He  is  come 
He  will  declare  unto  us  all  things.'^  This  seemed  to 
say,  "the  Messiah,  will  He  ever  come,  the  hope  of 
Samaritan  as  well  as  Jew?  Oh,  that  He  were  here 
now,  then  should  I  know  all  I  now  lack.'' 

This  outreach  of  hope  of  the  stricken,  convicted 
woman,  Jesus  laid  hold  of  and  said  to  her  plainly, 
"that  Messiah  is  here  now ;  I  that  speak  unto  thee 
am  He.'' 

We  indeed  cannot  say,  "I  am  He  the  Messiah "  ; 
but  we  can  say,  ' '  He  whom  I  know  as  the  Messiah  is 
here  in  my  heart  and  near  to  you."    The  sinful  world 


142  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

thinks  of  God  as  afar  off,  even  infinitely  distant.  Sin 
itself  in  us  falsifies  the  situation  j  but  the  exact  oppo- 
site is  the  fact,  and  it  is  the  disciple's  business  to 
deny  the  last  lie  of  Satan.  God  is  not  afar  off,  nor 
does  any  one  need  to  retrace  all  the  weary  steps  of  his 
life- wandering  to  get  back  to  God ;  he  has  simply  to 
right-about-face,  say,  ^'Father  I  have  sinned,''  and 
God  is  there : 

'*  Closer  is  He  than  breathing, 
Nearer  than  hands  and  feet." 

(h)  Jesus  appreciated  the  previous  seed-sowing  of 
others  and  utilized  it.  He  explained  the  suddenness 
of  this  revival  in  part  by  saying  to  the  disciples  : — 
^'  I  sent  you  to  reap  that  whereon  ye  have  not  la- 
boured :  others  have  laboured  and  ye  have  entered  into 
their  labour."  He  knew  that  however  errant  from 
the  Jewish  faith  the  Samaritans  were,  they  possessed 
a  certain  amount  of  light ;  they  had  a  historic  ver- 
sion of  the  Pentateuch ;  they  were  worshippers, 
albeit  their  temple  was  on  Gerizim  and  not  Moriah  ; 
they  cherished  hope  of  the  Messiah.  By  whomso- 
ever these  seeds  were  sown  they  were  seeds  of  truth 
and  pregnant  with  harvest  to  one  who  had  the 
insight  to  discern  it.  He  did  not  have  to  wait  to 
undo  all  the  errors  of  the  semi-heathen  community 
to  reap  some  fruit.  He  thrust  in  the  sickle  at  once. 
It  is  for  the  lack  of  discernment  of  this  principle 


THE  FIELDS  WHITE  UNTO  HARVEST    143 

that  many  modern  ministers  and  missionaries  put 
farther  off  from  them  than  they  need  the  day  of 
harvest.  To  a  degree  indeed,  all  are  seed-sowers, 
but  their  seeding  may  be  largely  reaped  by  others. 
The  wise  harvester  presumes  that  other  workers  have 
been  before  him ;  that  the  seed  somehow  lives  be- 
cause God  is  watching  over  it,  and  he  proceeds  to 
harvest.  One  of  the  most  effective  evangelists  I 
ever  knew  was  a  man  who,  while  others  were  wont 
to  say  of  him,  he  was  '^no  preacher,''  nevertheless 
had  the  humility  and  the  sense  to  say,  '^It  is  my 
business  to  presume  upon  the  good  preaching  that 
long  has  been  done  before  me.  I  get  men  to  act  on 
that."  And  act  they  did,  as  I  personally  observed 
in  an  important  western  city,  until  about  3,000  con- 
verts were  enrolled  in  the  various  churches  of  the 
city,  many  of  whose  pastors  had  at  first  disparaged 
the  skill  of  the  reaper.  If  it  is  true  that  some  who 
are  ever  learning  never  come  to  the  knowledge  of  the 
truth,  it  is  also  true  that  some  who  are  ever  preach- 
ing lead  few  or  none  into  personal  salvation.  It  is 
largely  from  failure  to  make  the  most  of  the  work 
of  their  predecessors. 

Perhaps  the  human  qualifications  in  Jesus  were 
all  summed  up  in  this :     He  was  the  living  truth. 

Christian  worker,  young  minister,  novice  on  the 
foreign  field,  seek  then  first  to  come  into  close, 
gracious  relation  to  even  one  poor  soul  waiting  by 


144  METHOD  IN  SOUL- WINNING 

the  wayside  for  a  spiritual  guide.  And  as  this 
woman  at  Sychar  in  the  new  elation  of  the  discovery 
of  the  Christ,  forgot  her  water-pot  and  went  away  to 
the  city  with  the  sense  of  a  brimming  spring  within  her, 
and  said  to  the  people,  ''Come  see  a  man  who  told  me 
all  things  that  ever  I  did— can  this  be  the  Christ?  '^ 
again  others  will  believe,  not  merely  because  of  the 
saying  of  the  new  herald,  but  they  will  come  to 
Christ  Himself  first-hand,  and  shortly  testify,  ''we 
know  that  this  is  indeed  the  Saviour  of  the  world.'' 
A  revival  is  something  which  in  form  or  effect,  no 
one  can  possibly  foresee.  It  has  in  it  always  an 
element  of  surprise:  it  is  Christ's  "behold,  I  say 
unto  you  look  on  the  fields, — the  fields  you  thought 
blasted,  black  with  death — but  they  are  really  white 
to  harvest,  whitened  while  you  look,  contrary  to  all 
you  believe  or  expect,  God's  own  original  and 
strange  wonder.  Then  against  all  odds,  believe  in 
the  revival  as  possible  and  sudden  anywhere,  have 
it  within  you  complete  in  your  own  personality, 
carry  it  with  you  wherever  you  go,  as  Jesus  the 
Master  did,  and  ere  you  are  aware  again  and  again 
the  angels  will  strike  up  with  you  the  song  of 
Haevest  Home. 


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Date  Due 

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